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A KNIGHT of the 
TOILERS 


..BY.. 

ARTHUR NEWELL 



PUBLISHED BY 

F. L. MARSH & CO. 

Philadelphia, Pa. 



LIBRARY of CONGRESS 
Two Copies Received 

DEC 8 1905 

Copyright Entry 

7. 

CLASS CL XXc. No. 

/ 3 0 (,9 X 

COPY B. 


Copyright, 1905 , by 
F. L. MARSH & CO. 



Trevor 



TREVOR 


I. 

At a square desk in a large room, at 
the rear of a suite of commercial offices, 
there sat a small, nervous man, whose 
business for the moment was— waiting. 

He was not a man who liked to wait. 
The characteristic of him which was 
most marked was his swiftness of move- 
ment. He was all eye and all leap. 

And besides being temperamentally 
unfitted to wait, Mr. Pattison was a man 
whose power and authority had accus- 
tomed him to say ^^Go^’ or to say 
‘‘Come,’’ and to be obeyed quickly. If 
there were those who tarried, it was his 
nature instantly to manifest his angry 


A Knight of the Toilers 

impatience by overt and unmistakable 
act. He was a great man, and it was 
like a wound in bis body if his import- 
ance were for a moment disregarded. 

Yet this morning he waited— if not 
calmly, yet at least with the outward 
semblance of composure. The explana- 
tion lay in the fact that the man for 
whom he waited was one whose value— 
measured even by that severest of tests, 
actual dollars— was well-nigh indispen- 
sable. 

While he waited, the great man re- 
viewed once again some documents 
which lay there on his desk before him. 

The documents were interesting- 
documents fraught with the only kind 
of interest that ever got deep into Mr. 
Pattison’s heart. They concerned a plan 
for making another fine addition to his 
already magnificent revenues. 

10 


Trevor 


Back in the earlier days of his career, 
when the magnate had begun to extend 
the sphere of his business operations, it 
had been necessary to establish offices in 
nearly every considerable city of the 
country, and, of course, to place at the 
head of each office a manager ; a mana- 
ger who was an able man. Following 
the earlier days came the period when 
competition in commerce became as 
war to the knife, and knife to the 
hilt.” Then, any survival whatsoever of 
the Pattison business depended directly 
on the energy and the resourcefulness, 
the zeal and the loyalty, at their various 
posts, of these managers. But, finally, 
as triumph had come— that day when 
competitors had been crushed (the few 
remaining absorbed) and Pattison him- 
self was able to contemplate the country 
from the standpoint of his own business. 


A Knight of the Toilers 

with the pleasing consciousness that he 
had a quite perfect monopoly of the 
trade— then it seemed that one of the 
many advantages resulting was the 
ability to dispense with this rather ex- 
pensive staff of managers— these men 
who had been associated with him so 
long in the upbuilding of his business. 
During the course of the years their sal- 
aries of compulsion had crept up into 
large figures— figures so large, in fact, 
that the annual aggregate thereof rep- 
resented an imposing sum. 

And the eye of the magnate having 
once begun to look enviously in this di- 
rection, his instincts itched to divert the 
sum thus paid out back into his private 
purse. Economy, he said, dictated that 
high salaries should go. And in having 
them go, two hundred thousand dollars 
would be returned to his private purse. 

12 


Trevor 


There was, however, an obstructive 
difficulty; a matter of some pledges— 
contracts perhaps— made with these 
men in the days of stress ; agreements 
whose purport was to protect the mana- 
gers themselves in a share of that in- 
crease in fortune which time and their 
own energies had helped to bring to 
pass. In order that Pattison’s eager in- 
stinct might be satisfied, it was neces- 
sary that these contracts must in some 
way be gotten over— nullified, disre- 
garded, or whatever was necessary. 

It was at this point that the man for 
whom Mr. Pattison was now waiting 
was useful— was indeed indispensable. 
As a past master in discovering the loop- 
holes of escape, in giving the right and 
effective tone to a plan where either 
money-saving or money-making was in- 
volved, and in those diplomatic niceties 

13 


A Knight of the Toilers 

necessary to carry out such a plan, Tre- 
vor, Mr. Pattison believed, was without 
a rival. 

Trevor was the magnate’s confidential 
lieutenant. 

14 


II. 


Shoetly Trevor came into his own 
room, and the magnate joined him. 

‘‘Just glance over that,” he said. He 
placed the document relating to the sal- 
ary list on Trevor’s desk. 

The list included some twenty names, 
and opposite the names there were three 
rows of figures. The first row set forth 
the salaries which the managers' were 
now drawing. The second row gave the 
salaries as Mr. Pattison had decided 
they should be. The last row gave the 
saving effected by the reduction. The 
figures were neat and precise, and in the 
great man’s own hand. The total at the 
foot of the third column was in red ink, 
and indicated the amount that the pro- 
posed economy would return to the cor- 
poration’s treasury. 

15 


A Knight of the Toilers 

We must attend to details/’ Mr. 
Pattison said, with a grin. 

It required a glance only for Trevor 
to understand. Yet Trevor’s eyes lin- 
gered over that page as his eyes were 
rarely accustomed to linger over any- 
thing. Slowly he re-read, and then up 
and down the page again. 

It was not in the figures that his in- 
terest centered. The first quick glance 
was enough for that. His interest was 
in the names. There was Bob Ensign- 
whole-souled, large-minded, courageous 
Bob. There was Tom Herron— clever, 
clear-headed, loyal; and Henry Reed, 
and Ferd Williams, and old fat Gilli- 
cuddy— the clean-souled Irishman, who 
would fight for his friends as long as 
breath stayed in his body. 

These names— and others on the list 
as well— were the names of men who had 
16 


Trevor 


stood to Trevor as friends— as such com- 
rades in the battle of life as he knew. 
And just now the proposition involving 
these friends, which Mr. Pattison was 
making, struck the young man as con- 
taining a peculiar measure of iniquity. 

Even apart from contracts made with 
them or pledges given to them, these 
were the men upon whose energies and 
brains the Pattison business had been 
built up. These were the men whose 
loyalty in the days of stress had made 
any Pattison corporation possible what- 
ever. 

And now it was proposed to reduce 
them to a clerk’s wage; these men who 
by now had put their stakes in the 
ground and had families looking to 
them for the privileges of life and be- 
ing; who were important figures in the 
life of many communities; these men 

2 17 


A Knight of the Toilers 

who were his friends— to shove them 
back practically to where they were 
when they began their battle with life. 

That the proposition was like many 
which had gone before did not seem just 
now to be pertinent ; nor that the disre- 
gard of pledges and of moral responsi- 
bility was the natural sequence of a well- 
established principle of business. What 
Trevor now saw in it was a ruthlessly 
violated bond given to loyal men ; men, 
moreover, who were his friends. This 
was the point as it happened at which he 
was tender, the point at which his own 
sensibilities were capable of being awak- 
ened. 

You see,” the magnate urged, 
we’ve got things now, to suit ourselves. 
And,” after a pause, it means two 
hundred thousand dollars a year. That’s 
worth saving.” 


18 


Trevor 


An expression of contempt spread 
over Trevor ^s face. 

One doesn’t develop a trust for 
nothing, eh ? ” Mr. Pattison added, a lit- 
tle apologetically. 

‘‘ I don’t like the idea,” said Trevor. 

Don’t like it? ” 

We are pledged to these men.” 

Yes,” said Pattison, pledges— 
pledges are in the day’s work. But 
a reverberating, chuckling laughter 
rolled out. Pattison rarely descended 
into the deep mire but that he strove to 
give the journey an air of merry pleas- 
antry. 

“ This,” he said, ‘Ms a little item of 
business.” 

He moved a step away. “A circular 
letter,” he said, with an air of authority 
—an authority which indeed was rare in 
his relation to the young man— “ a cir- 

19 


A Knight of the Toilers 

cular letter, I judge, will cover the 
case.” 

And, leaving the papers on Trevor’s 
desk, the magnate returned to his own 


room. 


III. 


While Mr. Pattison had stood by, 
Trevor realized that his own mental pro- 
cesses had been somewhat confused; 
that he had been slow in conceiving the 
distinction there was to be made— the 
distinction upon which a claim could be 
based, to save his friends. 

But when the door connecting the two 
rooms was closed, the young men under- 
stood that emotion of some sort had got 
into these matters of business. And, 
incidentally, the conviction dawned 
upon him that one’s feelings were them- 
selves a legitimate and tangible consid- 
eration. 

Damn him! ” he muttered. A rude 
instinct surged in his breast; the in- 
stinct to lay hands on the man behind 

the door, to do him physical violence, to 
21 


A Knight of the Toilers 

treat him as the worm, as the slimy, 
snake-like thing Trevor felt him to be. 

Could this man not once act true to 
men whose nature he was supposed to 
share ? Could he not once make decent 
recognition of loyal service Allow an 
ordinary return where he had profited 
so much? At the very least, could not 
that honor which is among thieves sur- 
vive with him ? 

Habit being strong, however, Trevor 
hesitated. He sat down. He examined 
the documents once more. And then a 
smile— a contemptuous, but an intelli- 
gent smile— returned to his lips. The 
issue, after all, was a simple matter of 
business. Mr. Pattison was acting only 
as the purpose controlling dictated that 
he should act. And since Trevor ^s own 
ox was not being gored, he could say of 
the others “ it is their own funeral.’ • 


22 


Trevor 


His composure being thus restored, be 
passed into the room of his chief, and 
was amiably welcomed. 

Back there,” the magnate said, 
valuable men were needed, they had 
things to do. We had to have men^ 
men of brains. ’ ’ And he laughed. ^ ^ They 
had to do pretty much as they could, for 
all the help we could give them. They 
had to do as they pleased, and we had to 
take what they were pleased to do.” 

Well, back there, we had to pay 
these men— high salaries— about as high 
as they asked. And I guess they were 
worth it. I have seen the time,” and 
again he laughed, when more than one 
of those offices did bigger business and 
made bigger money than this home office 
ever thought of making. Salaries crept 
up, of course.” He paused, smiling 
reminiscently. 


23 


A Knight of the Toilers 

Well,” lie resumed, that was in 
the days of competition. Things are 
different now. Those men simply have 
to take business when it comes to them. 
Business can’t go anywhere else! There 
is no call for brains, you see.” 

Why,” he went on, laughing again, 
any office boy can do the work that a 
branch office stands for to-day; a small 
clerk, at any rate, at a thousand a year* 
That’s where combination comes in. 
There’s no need to pay big salaries. 
We’ve got things in our own hands. It’s 
machinery and system now. A few of 
us here in New York can supply all the 
brains that are necessary.” 

And viewed impartially, Trevor was 
obliged to admit the entire reasonable- 
ness of Mr. Pattison’s point of view. 
The matter of pledges or contracts or 
moral obligations was, on the whole, ir- 
relevant. 


24 


Trevor 


You fix it up, my boy,’’ Mr. Patti- 
son concluded. If those men want to 
stay on at the new figures— well, let 
them. If not, we will put on some of 
their sub-clerks.” 

And, Trevor doing as he was expected 
to do, the item passed off as another in 
the routine of a business day. 

25 


IV. 


At the day’s end, and as Trevor drew 
down the top of his desk, he was con- 
scious of a certain weariness of things. 

He was alone. 

As he arose from his chair, he walked 
reflectively to that window which looked 
out over the great buildings of the city 
and on toward the river and the bay. 
The panorama which opened before his 
eyes was one which always had inspired 
him ; the great buildings, stretching out 
in one direction and another— stores, 
warehouses, offices, exchanges, banks— 
bespeaking the magniflcence of the com- 
merce of an imperial city ; bespeaking to 
him also the eager, earnest, intense en- 
deavor of great armies of workers; be- 
speaking the bold ambitions of strong 
men and their brilliant triumphs. 

26 


Trevor 


And beyond the buildings were the 
craft of the river and the bay— these, 
too, the witnesses of a great commerce, 
and of the enterprise of single-minded, 
unwavering men. There was a glimpse 
of the great bridge also, and of the swift- 
ly-coming and swiftly-going trains of 
cars. 

To this scene Trevor had always 
looked for a renewal of zest in his doing 
and striving. The sense that it gave 
him of effort, of energy, of success, the 
sense which it gave him of relationship 
and of contest with the thousands of 
busy workers— all this was as the wine 
of new life. 

But just now, while he was not alto- 
gether unresponsive to the inspiration 
of it, another point of view sought a 
place in his mind. By a singular fancy, 
these great buildings, hiving their thous- 

27 


A Knight of the Toilers 

ands upon thousands of workers, sug- 
gested also myriads of cowardly trans- 
actions— like that, for example, which 
during the day he had been called upon 
himself to consummate; like those, in- 
deed, which were of the web and woof of 
each day’s striving, ambitious life, to 
the nature and significance of which, in- 
deed, he was only now becoming awak- 
ened ; the myriads of falsehoods and dis- 
honesties, of tricks and manipulations 
and frauds, of treacheries and corrup- 
tion, the inevitable output of that in- 
grained selfishness which was the cen- 
tral motive of it all. 

Nor could the thought be denied of the 
effect of these things upon the lives of 
the actors in it ; the depressing infiuence 
of them as well as the narrowing and 
hardening infiuence; the debasing con- 
sequence of the customs and practices of 
28 


Trevor 


trade upon the minds and hearts of 
those whose lives were moulded by them. 

For the moment, indeed, new as was 
this later conception of things, two 
points of view contested for the control 
of Trevor’s mind; on the one hand, the 
idea of the splendor of material achieve- 
ments— of great work triumphantly 
done ; on the other, the cost of it to hu- 
manity itself ; on the one side the 
idea of great things reared and estab- 
lished; on the other, of that which was 
the dignity, nobility, and sweetness of 
life, slayed in the process. 

Shortly, however, the thought habit- 
ual to him resumed its ascendency ; the 
thought of the great buildings, as monu- 
ments of the clear-minded singleness of 
purpose of strong men; the thought of 
the craft of the river and the bay, the 
thought of the bridges, the railroad, in- 
29 


A Knight of the Toilers 

deed, of all the evidences of the city’s 
greatness, as memorials of men who 
moved unhesitatingly and unflinchingly 
to a goal kept unobscured either by the 
sentiments of the heart or by the moral- 
izing of the sages ; of men who, whether 
moved by imperious instincts or by reso- 
lute wills, were nevertheless the men for 
whom railroads, bridges, ships, great 
buildings, and the commerce in whose 
service these things found the reason of 
their being, stood as ample justiflcation. 

Of what use to speak of arbitrary ac- 
tions and questionable means ? Of short 
weights and false measures? Of injus- 
tices and manipulations ? The outstand- 
ing fact was simply that the magnifi- 
cence of the city, the glory of it, were 
memorials of these hard-headed, un- 
swerving men against whom such 
charges would have to lie. 

30 


Trevor 


It was, therefore, rather as a personal 
matter that he must come back to think 
of Pattison as one of these men;— that 
bit of a manikin, that half-snake, half- 
tiger sort of thing still scratching away 
in the adjoining room. Yet Pattison, in 
truth, was one of the great magnates. 
As witness of his power stood a vast 
business with its ramifications in every 
city of the land. 

^‘And, yet,’’ thought Trevor, one 
Bob Ensign were worth twenty of him. 
More, it were worth killing twenty Pat- 
tisons that one Bob Ensign might sur- 
vive. ’ ’ 

With this reaction of thought, the 
young man passed out of the office and 
dovm into the street, to mingle there 
with the rushing, hurrying slaves of the 
grim god Trade. 

It was this last reflection, however, no 

31 


A Knight of the Toilers 

doubt, that led Trevor to speak as he did 
to Arnold, when, a little later, they were 
dining at the club. 

Men would have done better,’’ he 
said, to have remained under the sway 
of the fanatics of some mediaeval re- 
ligion, than to have come under the do- 
minion of the zealots of the religion of 
trade.” 


V. 


‘‘ Organized labor,’’ said Boyd Pro- 
theroe, has just missed understanding 
what its real resources are. It has dis- 
regarded its best opportunities. It has 
strained itself on efforts which were 
foredoomed to failure. But,” he em- 
phasized, let organized labor once 
realize what its real resources are, and 
the capitalist’s power will be gone in a 
night.” 

Well,” John Trevor smiled superi- 
orly, and what of it? ” 

They were the guests of Arnold at a 
little dinner. The latter had invited 
Protheroe, because, as an unofficial 
labor agitator, he was also thought to be 
something of an entertaining talker. 

The gulf between capital and labor 
will be bridged in a day,” Protheroe 

3 33 


A Knight of the Toilers 

continued. It is a simple matter of 
business. Men endured kings for thous- 
ands of years, and then— almost between 
crops— started a Eepublic. Now, let 
labor — 

Trevor, however, was inclined to be 
bored. 

Good, of course,’’ Trevor inter- 
rupted, “ but kings were, like enough, 
good things. And clever fellows, too.” 

Then, however, he spoke more seri- 
ously. 

“ Capitalists,” he said, are capital- 
ists— are the masters of labor, by force 
of one fundamental thing. They have 
the brains. They have the character.” 

Some things,” he continued, are 
absolute. A five-foot, thin-limbed, nar- 
row-chested, dyspeptic cannot match 
himself against a Sullivan or a Sandow. 
The issue is decided in advance. The 


34 


Trevor 


one has the muscle and the strength; 
the other hasn’t. So with labor and 
capital. The latter has the brains and 
the character (no matter if bad, it’s 
strong). The laborer hasn’t. Too bad 
he hasn’t? Perhaps. Too bad the dys- 
peptic hasn’t the Sandow muscles. But 
there you are.” 

<< Wrong,” Pr other oe had replied. 
‘‘It’s the capitalist who is the dyspep- 
tic, though knowing how to use his 
fists. The laborer is the muscular giant 
—but as yet beating the air. One day 
he will know where to strike his blows.” 

“ Why,” he went on, “ there is no 
point whatever at which the strength 
of organized labor isn’t greater— vastly 
greater— even in that point where he 
least expects, and his enemy least ad- 
mits— the point of money. 

“ Capitalists secure their power and 

35 


A Knight of the Toilers 

make their money by using money to 
make money and establish power. 
Labor uses its money for neither— de- 
pends solely on its muscle for both. But 
it will learn to use its money— and its 
muscle. 

And the capitalist adds to his 
money, ambition, and to his ambition, 
cunning, and to his cunning, unscrupu- 
lousness, and to these the love of power, 
and— well, do you think that these will 
never be aroused in the common man’s 
breast? ” 

‘‘ But,” Trevor interrupted, this 
use of the laboring man’s money. What 
is it ? Co-operation ? Co-operation, the 
fancy of dreamers ? Co-operative com- 
monwealth? Tried— and found want- 
ing. ’ ’ 

Once again Protheroe was aroused. 

<< There is,” he said, ‘‘ co-operation 

36 


Trevor 


and co-operation. There is, perhaps, a 
co-operation that begins in the spirit of 
Apostles’ Creeds and hymns, and winds 
up its solemn business with a peniten- 
tial prayer or a church row. There is— 
there might be— a co-operation that 
would begin in the spirit of a modern 
commercial pirate and that would ar- 
rive at a pretty climax of rule or ruin. 
And there is— there might be—” 

^^At any rate,” Trevor replied, a lit- 
tle wearily, “ at any rate, it is a some- 
thing we’ll meet when we get to it.” 
And so the talk had run on to its end. 
Sunday morning, however, impres- 
sions from that dinner came back to 
Trevor’s mind with a certain new mean- 
ing and with something of a large sig- 
nificance— the more so, perhaps, in light 
of a step he was about to take in his 
own life. Dragging himself from bed to 

37 


A Knight of the Toilers 

bath, from bath to easy chair and to 
lazy glances at books, and magazines 
and papers, impressions from that din- 
ner did persistently obtrude themselves 
upon his mind. 

Later in the day as well. Matters of 
his own to which he was about to at- 
tend were delayed while he rehearsed 
new ideas and weighed them and pon- 
dered them. Breaking in on other 
thoughts were impressions of what 
Protheroe had said; impressions, too, 
of the simple figure of the man himself. 

Surprising,’’ Trevor thought, in not 
having been so surprising as one ex- 
pected. 

‘‘And, indeed,” his refiections con- 
tinued, “ the most surprising thing now- 
a-days is that we are all so much alike. 
Come from whatever quarter one will, 
from any grade of social life, practice 

38 


Trevor 


whatever vocation, preach whatever 
doctrine, or profess whatever view. 
Not a bad chap at all.” 

At last, however, he brought himself 
to the writing of an important letter. 

Me. J. H. Pattison, President, 

New York. 

Dear Mr. Pattison,” so he began. 
And then he paused. 

But why the deuce? ” 

By now he was stretched on a couch. 
The insistence with which these specu- 
lations in regard to the problems of 
labor forced themselves on his mind sur- 
prised him exceedingly. 

Well,” he said, finally, deuce take 
the laboring man— and the corpora- 
tions, too.” 

He resumed his letter. 

‘‘ Dear Mr. Pattison:— 

I herewith resign the position I 
have held in your employ. 

39 


A Knight of the Toilers 

Permit me to take the occasion to 
thank you for the consideration with 
which you have treated me while I have 
been in your service. 

Yours very truly, 
John Trevoe.’’ 

He sealed the letter. 

And,” he reflected, so ends nine 
years. But— 

‘‘ Well, at any rate, I have fifty thou- 
sand put by— not every one has that.” 


Organization 



ORGANIZATION, 


VI. 

On a hot morning of the late summer, 
coming from no one quite knew where, 
there alighted at the grimy railroad 
station of Barton, a man whose singu- 
larly serious face attracted immediate 
attention. He had come unheralded. He 
was alone— carrying a light grip-sack 
in one hand and an umbrella in the 
other. 

The advent of this man, however, was 
significant. The echo of his step re- 
verberated, as it were, through valleys 
and over hills, miles to the south and 
longer miles to the north. The little 
citv itself was suddenly lifted from its 

43 


A Knight of the Toilers 

natural obscurity to broad and general 
importance, by reason of what this 
man’s coming meant. 

A few hours after his arrival this 
stranger was lodged in small, meagerly 
furnished rooms in a third-rate hotel. 
And there, very shortly, he was sur- 
rounded by a group— or to be exact, 
various changing groups— of men, of il- 
literate men, who, between quaffs of beer 
and puffs of smoke, told him in tones 
now pitiful, now sullen, now savage, of 
grievances, of injustices, of sufferings. 

The talks and discussions that fol- 
lowed were sharp and anxious. And in 
them the assumption was made, that 
this man could avenge the injustices and 
alleviate the sufferings. And now in one 
way, and now in another, he was in- 
vited, and urged, and implored to under- 
take the task. 


44 


Organization 

At the day’s end, this man, through 
the public press, gave to the world an 
announcement— in three dozen words. 
With the announcement there crept into 
the hearts of two million peaceful 
people a pervading sense of dread, of 
anxiety, of fear. A great region was at 
once awakened and awed. 

Indeed, a vast territory, but a moment 
before peaceful in the innumerable ac- 
tivities which its thriving industries af- 
forded, began now to revolve about that 
little spot in the third-rate hotel, and 
its people to find in this lone man, in the 
dimly-lighted rooms, the centre of their 
solemn interest. 

Pendleton, of course, had come into 
Barton (and into that Peranian mining 
region, of which Barton was one of the 
minor cities) with certain reputation, 
and with prestige of things masterfully 
45 


A Knight of the Toilers 

done. The announcement which the 
press made public was the warning that 
here in Perania, now, armies of men 
were to be organized in assertion of 
rights denied, and a great mass of la- 
boring men to be aroused in grim con- 
test for better share of the earth’s bless- 
ings— even as this man had aroused 
men, and organized men, and led them 
on, elsewhere. 

A spreading anxiety, a deepening 
fear, was natural. The peace and pros- 
perity, the life indeed, of the two mil- 
lions of people which comprised the 
population of Perania were now in« 
volved in what this man might do. And 
though editors, lawyers, preachers, 
more than all else, merchants, came 
forth to denounce the man and to de- 
clare the movement with which he 
threatened the region an impending 

46 


Organization 

calamity, yet the conviction spread that 
what Pendleton undertook was certain 
to move forward forcefully and inexor- 
ably to some conclusive end. That was 
the conviction imposed by knowledge of 
what he had done elsewhere; by the 
knowledge of phalanxes in other regions 
which he had led out boldly and tri- 
umphantly against the masters of in- 
dustrial enterprise. 

The purpose which had brought Pen- 
dleton into Perania was in its last an- 
alysis quite his own. Not perhaps that 
it was his own in the sense of working 
for any personal aggrandizement or 
power. Bather, his deepest conviction 
was, that thousands of men suffering 
under injustice and tyranny, suffering 
under poverty and weakness too griev- 
ous to resist injustice and tyranny, suf- 
fering even as he himself had suffered, 
47 


A Knight of the Toilers 

were now to be alleviated by what he 
should do ; were to be relieved and bene- 
fited, even though they themselves 
should prefer that no effort be made in 
their behalf, even though they were 
themselves too timid or too cautious to 
risk a disturbance of the conditions 
which were established. 

But it was a purpose which was born 
not from some prudent investigations of 
conditions, or wise balancings of rea- 
sons, but of the experiences of Pendle- 
ton’s own life, and of the beatings of his 
own heart ; a heart kept resolute almost 
to the point of ferocity, because of 
scarred years ; years of his own boyhood 
and young manhood; years damned in 
part by grinding toil, but still more by 
blighting, irrevocable, irredeemable in- 
justice. 

Pendleton had come to Barton itself 


48 


Organization 

because in their difficulties just then 
these Barton miners needed counsel and 
guidance. He knew that he would he 
welcome. They needed also a spokes- 
man, a leader, and Pendleton supplied 
himself for the function. Nevertheless 
the difficulties over which the miners of 
Barton were disturbed constituted but a 
local and, relatively, but a trifling af- 
fair. 

That larger purpose which was to in- 
volve all of Perania originated with 
Pendleton alone. Barton was but the 
base for his larger operations. 

And Pendleton had formed his’ own 
plans for carrying his purpose into ac- 
tion. 

The Peranian mining region, ^ in the 
popular mind, was divided into two sec- 
tions; the southern section on the one 
hand, the northern on the other. Be- 


A Knight of the Toilers 

tween the two sections there were in the 
character of the people, their race and 
their temperament, and in their ma- 
terial conditions, marked differences. 
Pendleton knew what these differences 
were. 

The people of the north were con- 
servative ; those of the south were tem- 
peramentally restless. The people of 
the north were cautious; those of the 
south, impulsive. The people of the 
north were to a prevailing degree men 
who had stakes in the ground— homes, 
families; they were real parts of the 
life of their communities. The people 
of the south had suffered most from 
poverty. 

In the northern section, therefore, 
Pendleton had seen that the obstacles 
that would be interposed to his purpose 
would be many, the difficulties to be 

50 


Organization 

overcome great. In the southern sec- 
tion, on the other hand, he might fairly 
rely on a quick response to his appeals. 
The people there would yield themselves 
most quickly to the command of a self- 
constituted leader. 

Pendleton thus had hit upon Barton 
as a city in the southern section with 
something of the strategy of a general. 
And in his plans, his advance from that 
city onward was outlined with a skill 
not unlike that with which a Napoleon 
might pick his course from Elb to Paris. 
It was to be an advance whose accumu- 
lating momentum was to be the lever 
through which to arouse those farther 
on ; from Barton to Everdale, where 
there were feelings that might easily be 
fanned into flame; from Everdale to 
Heberton, where old irritations might 
be reawakened. And so on. In its last 


51 


A Knight of the Toilers 

stage it was to be a southern section 
aroused and organized, going into the 
north to persuade or to demand, as the 
case might require— to encourage or to 
intimidate; to enlist or to coerce. 

The speed with which he got his pur- 
pose into action justified that title to 
reputation which had been given to him. 
It was on a Sunday evening that he had 
appeared before the public as the 
spokesman of the Barton miners. By 
the Tuesday following there were added 
to Barton the miners of eight towns in 
the surrounding country, and a new or- 
ganization of workers had been well 
launched. Everdale and Heberton fell 
readily into line. Twenty-four hours 
later a dozen more towns had added 
themselves to the movement. On the 
day following, Pendleton visited the 
cities of Berea and Abington. Ad- 
52 


Organization 

dressing meetings of thousands of men, 
he awakened a sense of rights to he won, 
even where no sense had been of rights 
withheld, and of grievances to be ad- 
justed where no sense had been of in- 
justice endured. 

Those critics who had attributed to 
Pendleton a remarkable gift of speech 
had not erred. His eloquence was his 
power. In city and town and village 
he had but to appear and to speak. 
Great lists of names were added to 
swell the movement which his purpose 
alone had determined. In ten days the 
aggressive assertion of his single mind 
had aroused and organized near an hun- 
dred thousand men. The preparation 
for a great industrial battle was well 
advanced. 

But thus far Pendleton’s work had 
not extended beyond the southern sec- 

63 


A Knight of the Toilers 

tion. During the days of his success- 
ful work there, the miners of the north 
had maintained an apparent indiffer- 
ence to the things which were being 
done in the south, which had surprised 
even Pendleton himself— clear as his 
foresight had been. The northern sec- 
tion was still to be reckoned with. This, 
indeed, was the beginning of his real 
battle. 

54 


VII. 


Some warnings that a definite oppo- 
sition to his work existed in the norths 
Pendleton had received. Later there 
came a report from one of his lieuten- 
ants— a report to the effect that the op- 
position was strongly organized. 

The men here,” the report read, 
have strong organizations'. Never- 
theless, they are not going to be with us. 
They are opposed to us, and are going 
to fight.” 

They must join us,” Pendleton had 
said. 

Just as he was ready to go up to 
Hampton, however, and there open his 
northern campaign, a letter reached 
him. This letter gave cause for deep 
thought. 

There are more ways than one of 

56 


A Knight of the Toilers 

fighting a battle,’’ the letter read, but 
whatever the way in which one chooses 
to fight, it is wise that one should be 
thoroughly prepared. 

‘^And now, both because we doubt 
that you have taken the way which is 
right for fighting this battle, and be- 
cause in any case we are sure that there 
are preparations that should be made 
which you have neglected to make, 
some of us are going to oppose your 
movement. In view of this, we sub- 
mit for your consideration certain 
facts. 

careful estimate shows that the 
strike which ^you now propose will cost 
the men of the region in lost wages 
and otherwise twenty millions of dol- 
lars— possibly more, possibly less. 
Previous battles of the same kind 
have cost a good deal more. 

66 


Organization 

In case you won no concession 
from the operators— which is at least 
a possible outcome of the situation— 
these millions would be a total loss; a 
loss which the men not only can not 
afford to lose, but, in our judgment, 
can not afford to take the risk of los- 
ing. 

On the other hand, in case your 
strike were successful— even as suc- 
cessful as any one could hope for— we 
estimate that the most favorable re- 
sults therefrom would be a ten per 
cent, increase in wages. 

^‘As the results of strikes go we ad- 
mit that this would be a very consid- 
erable achievement. Nevertheless— 
and this is the real point of our ob- 
jection to your movement— even a ten 
per cent, wage increase (as the best 
possible return from a strike) will in 

57 


A Knight ot the Toilers 

no degree compensate for the invest- 
ment of twenty millions of dollars, 
which is the estimated outlay that the 
strike would involve. 

That is to say, therefore, that the 
best return that is possible from any 
strike, as strikes are now conducted, in 
no degree equals the cost of winning 
it. That this may be quite clear we 
append a few figures, in considering 
which it must be remembered that 
even under the most favorablle condi- 
tions the men do not work full time, 
and that it is therefore proper to make 
a deduction of twenty per cent, on that 
account.’’ 

POSSIBLE PKOFIT FEOM STEIKE. 

Wages of 175,000 men for 
two years, $134,000,000 ; ten 
per cent, of which (wage 
increase) $13,400,000 


58 


Organization 

Less deduction for time lost 
in idleness (approximately 
20 per cent.) 2,700,000 

Gain in two years $10,700,000 

MINIMUM COST OF STRIKE. 

Lost wages of 175,000 men 

for three months $16,800,000 

Money (contributions) spent 
for support of men, 12 weeks 5,000,000 

Total cost $21,800,000 

Private funds* spent during 
idleness ? ? ? 


RECAPITULATION. 

Investment in strike $21,800,000 

Eeturn in two years 10,700,000 

Direct loss on investment. . . 11,800,000 
Interest on money ? ^ ? 


Debts contracted 


59 


A Knight of the Toilers 

‘‘ It will be seen that the result fig- 
ures out something like this: that we 
would pay nut in lost wages, etc., 
about twenty millions of dollars, and 
would gradually get back over a pe- 
riod of two years, in the form of a wage 
increase, twelve millions at the utmost, 
likely ten millions, possibly less. We 
invest twenty millions; we get back 
half of the principal. We make an in- 
vestment of money practically in hand ; 
the moiety that comes back to us is not 
for two years. That is bad business. 

Or, put it this way: Under the 
favorable circumstances of a victory, 
while we seem to gain, even then in 
reality we lose. The gain through a 
strike does not balance the cost of win- 
ning it— even if we do win it. While 
all the time the risk hangs over us of a 
defeat and of a total loss of money. 

60 


Organization 

‘‘ This is significant and suggestive. 
It signiiies that the men of the region 
can afford twenty millions in a battle 
for their rights. It suggests that there 
must be better ways of employing 
twenty millions of dollars than in the 
hazardous enterprise of a strike. And, 
in our opinion, the present conditions 
suggest as the right line of effort on 
the part of the leaders of organized 
labor, the massing of a permanent capi- 
tal— a capital of dignified dimensions: 
suggest thereafter the putting of that 
capital itself to work as an instrument 
of advantage to the men: and of start- 
ing it forth on that march of increase 
and growth and power which great ag- 
gregations of capital alone command. 

The fact is,” the letter concluded, 
that in these days in which the su- 
preme power in all affairs is Capital— 
61 


A Knight of the Toilers 

great sums of money massed and used 
as the instrument to wrest and compel 
advantages— capital is the one thing 
which organized labor has neglected to 
bring to its service. Until efforts to 
this end have been made, we oppose any 
movement that involves the waste and 
loss of money.’’ 

Pendleton pondered this letter long. 
The advantage of a great capital to 
facilitate the battles of labor was, of 
course, self-evident. The vision of a 
great organization of labor’s forces 
reaching forth for many and various ad- 
vantages, with a large and permanent 
capital as its instrument, found a mo- 
mentary lodgment even in Pendleton’s 
mind. There were here, no doubt, vast 
possibilities. 

Then, however, the weight of the 
traditions and policies that had hereto- 
62 


Organization 

fore governed in all the circles of labor, 
resumed its sway. Pendleton’s jaws 
set tight. 

Nonsense,” he said. 

Two days later he went up to Hamp- 
ton and opened his northern campaign 
in a great meeting on Hampton Fields. 

No one who listened to the speech that 
Pendleton made that day, ever spoke of 
it as other than great and powerful. Its 
eloquent directness, the breadth of un- 
derlying principles which it unfolded, 
the simple force with which the vast ar- 
ray of the ugly facts of industrial des- 
potism were marshalled, and the power 
with which the appeal was made to the 
fundamental hopes and aspirations of 
the heart— all this was essentially con- 
vincing. 

And yet, contrasting sharply with 
his success in the south, the appeal that 

63 


A Knight of the Toilers 

he now made was utterly ineffective. 
Save only as a few men were carried 
out of themselves, the response was 
scarcely more than silence. Not un- 
naturally Pendleton was seriously dis- 
turbed. 

As the great crowds were moving 
away, the southern leader was ap- 
proached by a man dressed in miner’s 
clothes, with a face of peculiar eager- 
ness. 

‘‘ Do you know,” the man asked, ‘‘ do 
you know who’s blocking your game? 
There’s the man,” he continued, “ the 
good-looking fellow.” 

He directed Pendleton’s eye to a 
young-looking man of forceful figure, 
who stood a little off. 

“ He’s the man,” the stranger added. 

The little fellow. He’s the man 
what’s beating you. He’s playing a 
game of his own.” 


64 


Organization 

He’s not a miner,” said Pendle- 
ton. 

But lie is, though,” the stranger 
stoutly replied. 

He’s not 8i miner,” Pendleton re- 
peated, now, almost savagely. 

‘^Anyhow,” said the other, he’s a 
mine leader. He’s the biggest of the 
lot.” 

What’s his name? ” Pendleton de- 
manded. 

<< Trevor,” was the reply, ‘‘ John 
Trevor.” 


VIII. 


The two men who were now to op- 
pose each other, who, indeed, at the 
head of rival organizations were to con- 
tend for the control of industrial Pe- 
ranla, were, in the traits of their char- 
acter, striking contrasts. As a labor 
leader, Trevor, in his methods thus far, 
had been seemingly casual. 

His very coming into the Peranian 
region, indeed, had had that casual 
quality in it so much that even those 
who now knew him best, could not have 
told whether it were six months or 
twelve since he had begun to drop into 
the irregular meetings of the then run- 
down local union. 

So casual also had been his exchange 
of greeting, or of comment, or of genial 
word, with the men whom he had met, 
66 


Organization 

that that great number who now re- 
garded him with keen, almost passion- 
ate friendliness, could not have said, 
even approximately, when it was that 
they had first met him. 

And so, indeed, had that casualness 
of his coming and going continued, that 
only a chosen few had realized that his 
was any important part in that process 
of strengthening the organized interests 
of the northern section miners, which, 
shortly after his advent, had begun; 
fewer still, that that part which was his, 
was that at once of initiation, of gui- 
dance and domination. 

A word here and a smile there— that 
was Trevor. A chat in the corner with 
a dozen or more under the guise of 
stories and beer; an occasional motion 
made from the benches, with the tersest 
word of explanation or comment; a 

67 


A Knight of the Toilers 

still rarer five minute speech from the 
platform, half of which was jest or 
humor; or, toward the last, a friendly 
group now and then taken down to 
those bachelor rooms of his— this was 
the manner of Trevor’s activity in 
Hampton and in the adjacent cities and 
towns. 

And as none more or greater than 
such as this casual activity implied, had 
he for a long time stood in the estimate 
and thought of the great majority of 
the Peranian miners, among whom he 
had lived and moved. To that wider 
public, which knew of mines and mine 
unions only as disagreeable phases of 
the general life, his name was not so 
much as a string of letters. 

Yet, back of the manner of Trevor’s 
activity, there had been personality; 
and, guiding what he said and did, there 
68 


Organization 

had been a subtle mind and a strong will. 
And, in truth, such was the choice of 
the word passed, the timely use of the 
smile or greetings, the careful perti- 
nence of the motion made or speech ut- 
tered ; and such, also, the force and the 
attractiveness of the character back of 
them all, that there was scarce a man 
who would not have trusted Jack 
Trevor with his last dollar, or helped 
him with his last breath; more to the 
point, perhaps, there was hardly a word 
that Jack Trevor said which was not 
speedily endorsed, or an action which he 
undertook which was without the re- 
sponse of general aid. 

Earlier, very surely, Trevor had been 
just exceptional enough to have been 
talked of ; perhaps, at first, to have been 
a little suspiciously regarded. Some- 
thing in the looks of him a cut above 

69 


A Knight of the Toilers 

the miner,’’ it had been said. And 
then, too, something in the bearing— at 
once a little undefined fiavor of kindli- 
ness rather than geniality, and of sep- 
arate-standing individuality rather than 
easily-mingling fraternity; and a man- 
ner a little too formal and a little too 
gracious ; rather more of courtesy than 
was called for in the every day touch 
with fellow workers. 

But as, on the one side, Trevor ad- 
justed himself the more to them, and on 
the other, the miners accustomed them- 
selves the more to him, this attention 
became less marked. That remaining, 
which still made him distinct, was ac- 
counted for variously— but always sat- 
isfactorily. A favorite theory was to as- 
sign him an English birth, and well-to- 
do parentage, and misfortune ; a theory 
never thoroughly rebutted for, of him- 
self, Trevor never spoke. 

70 


Organization 

Even that view of him which came 
when later some of the miners went 
down to his rooms, and which, for a 
time, renewed discussion of him— that, 
too, soon passed into the current of ac- 
cepted things. This was the view of 
that Trevor who sat of evenings at his 
own large, square table-desk, piled high 
with books, in a room whose walls, when 
not preempted by bookcases, were lined 
with portraits of famous men and with 
etchings ; of the Trevor whose beds were 
of brass and whose bath was of porce- 
lain, and whose carpets and chairs and 
furnishings generally, were of such lux- 
urious comfort— despite the fact that 
the house in which his rooms were, ex- 
cept for height and breadth, was scarce 
above the average quality of that poor 
part of the city where the laboring pop- 
ulation lived; of the Trevor whose ci- 

71 


A Knight of the Toilers 

gars and tobacco, liberally passed about, 
were of the best, and who, on occasion, 
opened bottles of rare wine. 

Even this view of Trevor was very 
soon a part of the accepted things. 
And Trevor, himself, continued to move 
about with the same air of casual good- 
fellowship, and the same general esti- 
mation of trust and regard and popu- 
larity. 

Thus it was in a very casual manner 
that Trevor had played his part so far 
in Hampton. If to his eye had come 
sight of the miseries and the sufferings 
and the poverty which formed the bur- 
den of the great speeches of Richard 
Pendleton, Trevor’s voice, at any rate, 
had never admitted it. Or if in his 
mind, there had been the consciousness 
of injustices and wrongs and tyrannies 
on the part of operators ; of grievances 

72 


Organization 

on the part of miners ; of rights denied, 
of privileges and opportunities brutally 
withheld, as in Pendleton’s fervently 
uttered thought there certainly were, 
then, at least Trevor’s lips had never 
opened to communicate his belief to 
others. No speech of his or passing 
word had ever glanced more than casu- 
ally at those grave things which were 
the deep disturbance of the miner’s 
hearts. 

And yet, though working thus quietly, 
Trevor’s purpose had been clear cut. 
Though he had held no office, and 
though until now he had not been recog- 
nized as a leader, yet everywhere the 
results of his strong work were in evi- 
dence. 

There was no local union in the 
Northern section, in fact, that had not 
been changed, reorganized, strength-. 

73 


A Knight of the Toilers 

ened, solidified, by the pervading in- 
fluence of Trevor’s ideas and the direc- 
tion and control of his masterly hand. 

It was a process of building up, of 
preparation ; working quietly, circui- 
tously, even stealthily, Trevor’s word 
went forth and it became life ; or, some- 
times, heavy pressure was suddenly con- 
centrated, and a thing indifferently 
heeded, or even deliberately fought, be- 
came securely established. 

All along the line, the process was 
patiently, laboriously continued. Old 
organizations were revolutionized; new 
ones were launched; all of them were 
solidified. 

Sustaining the process, of course, the 
guiding thought was kept alive of a 
great battle ahead for men’s rights; yet 
accompanying this thought, the con- 
straining one of a battle then, only, when 

74 


Organization 

the men were rightly prepared, and 
when they were intrenched in positions 
impregnably strong. 

At the juncture to which affairs had 
now come, this strengthening process 
disclosed itself along two definite lines ; 
that of organization as such, and that of 
a system of finances. 

The organizing process had unfolded 
as if it had been modeled after some 
legion of old; or perhaps, after some 
highly effective political machine. 

It was an organization (though the 
terms were not used) into brigade and 
regiment and company; its general for 
every district, its captain for every hun- 
dred, its lieutenant for every fifty. 

And through this there had grown in 
remarkable degree a wide sense of 
each oner's individual part in the great 
thing — and each one’s responsibility. 

75 


A Knight of the Toilers 

Through it, also, the closest knowledge 
of the opinions prevailing, and feelings 
and sympathy; and the readiest means’ 
of keeping sympathy and feeling and 
opinion one, and making action one as 
well. 

You can move a crowd to act as one 
man, once;’’ Trevor had said, ^^you can 
move an army always.” 

Or looked at not so much as an 
army but as a fraternal organization, 
the improvement showed itself in the 
increased intelligence and efficiency of 
what was done at their assemblages. 
The interest in the material conditions 
of each member grew, stimulating to 
the moral force of all concerned. An 
increasing confidence also in the aims 
which the organization set for itself ma- 
tured. And the spirit of privacy, even 
secrecy, in all that was done grew 

76 


Organization 

apace. The advantage of masonic 
secrecy,” in fact, was carefully incul- 
cated. 

This system of organization was the 
means through which the system of fi- 
nances which now prevailed had been 
possible. It was a financial system 
whose moving idea was that of getting 
capital ahead, of making assessments 
while earnings were good, in contrast to 
the custom of coming to an industrial 
battle with an empty treasury and de- 
pending on the money that might be 
begged from workers elsewhere. 

A strain of fascinating mystery al- 
ways characterized the ideas which 
Trevor set afloat ; and this was not ab- 
sent from his methods in finance, and in 
sustaining continued regularity in col- 
lections. The thought that acted as the 
chief lever was, of course, that of a 

77 


A Knight of the Toilers 

great battle ahead for men’s rights’. 
Yet, rising above that idea, the larger 
one of being strongly prepared for bat- 
tle; of being strong as that class who 
were the enemy, were strong— strong 
in money, in capital, and in the inde- 
pendence and power which capital im- 
plied. 

At the time, therefore, that Richard 
Pendleton gave warning at Barton as 
to what the miners of Perania might 
expect, these men of the Northern sec- 
tion had turned spontaneously to John 
Trevor as their natural leader. And 
now that Pendleton had come into the 
north, he found himself facing a rival, 
who had back of him an organization 
whose strength was greater than any- 
one, save that leader himself, yet knew. 


78 


IX. 

Pendleton lost no time in seeking 
Trevor. 

The set back on Hampton Fields, and 
the forces which caused it, were things 
which must be promptly faced. 

Nor could any method of doing so be 
so direct as a meeting with the man who 
was the leader of the opposing forces, 
and of whom Pendleton now began to 
hear on every side. 

To seek Trevor in these days was, 
however, one thing; to find him— un- 
less you happened to be very humble 
and necessitous— was quite another. 
And it happened in Pendleton’s case— 
important factor though he was in the 
stirring affairs that were agitating the 
world of the mines and miners— that 
twenty-four hours were to elapse before 

79 


A Knight of the Toilers 

he could bring about the meeting and 
the discussion which he sought. 

Meanwhile, however, this time of 
waiting was to have its significant 
meaning— was to be, for Pendleton, a 
period full of surprises and of singu- 
lar revelations. 

Many things of which he had re- 
mained until now in ignorance, were in 
diverse ways to be brought to his atten- 
tion. And of these many things, some of 
them were seriously to disturb the con- 
fidence and the determination with 
which he had thus far fought his battle. 

Hints came to him freely ; statements 
also concerning matters that were vital ; 
and in addition there were rumors in 
the air— many rumors. That which 
came to Pendleton in these hours ab- 
ruptly opened for him a new level upon 
which thinking was to be done. 

80 


Organization 

The hints that came were certainly 
vague enough ; the statements, guarded- 
ly veiled in some cases, and manifestly 
exaggerated in others, were, at times, 
glaringly inconsistent . N e vertheless — 
and with more immediate effect upon 
himself than he liked to admit— Pendle- 
ton, through these things, w^as made 
aware of a point of view from which 
movements in this world of labor’s af- 
fairs might be judged, of which he, 
heretofore, had had not the least con- 
ception. More, there were, apparently, 
ends to contemplate, and possibilities to 
entertain, and ambitions to dare, which 
had never come within the range of his 
plans or his calculations. 

There was, besides, it would seem, a 
method of grasping the problem of 
labor’s difficulties, by comparison with 
which, the methods which had been so 

6 81 


A Knight of the Toilers 

long in practice, and of which he him- 
self now stood forth as the chief advo- 
cate, might well seem crude and feeble 
and ineftective. 

Into this atmosphere of the northern 
region there had come, indeed, a certain 
governing sense of great things to be 
—and of bold and determined methods, 
through which these great things were 
to be made to be. Ambition had struck 
a high and determined note. Even as 
there was at this time in the country as 
a whole, a reawakening to the marvel- 
lous wealth which was within the reach 
of those who should stretch forth their 
hands to get it— even as everywhere 
there were new evidences of the vast 
material prosperity which awaited 
those who might determinedly grasp it 
—so among these men there had dawned 
a belief that of this great material 
82 


Organization 

wealth which the country boasted, they 
might plan to gain their own large, and 
ever larger, share. 

It was a belief in larger ambitions 
and of wider possibilities. That, at 
least, was the aspect of the matter that 
was presented to Pendleton when his 
information came from those who were 
the more staid and conservative of the 
members of the northern unions. 

There were men of another class 
whose words struck more sharply still; 
men who discussed the injustices which 
they suffered no longer with hopeless- 
ness, but in hard voices asserted that 
these injustices were to be sharply cor- 
rected— and that, not by pleading, but 
by power ; men who discussed the fabu- 
lous gains that were accruing to the 
dominating few, no longer in sullen 
anger, but with faith that these gains 

83 


A Knight of the Toilers 

were to be divided; men who spoke of 
the giant strength of the great corpora- 
tions which ruled, no longer in the spirit 
of helplessness, but with sturdy confi- 
dence that organizations would arise 
through which a juster division of ad- 
vantages would be made secure; men 
—representatives of the vast mass of 
men as they were— who talked stoutly 
in key with the idea that it was only 
necessary for any body of the peo- 
ple as a whole to be awakened, to bring 
to pass that which they were determined 
should be brought to pass. Every- 
where, indeed, men— men whom Pendle- 
ton had known heretofore as patient 
bearers of hardships, as submissive ac- 
ceptors of conditions that existed— were 
now manifesting the spirit of bold am- 
bitions, and of the greater things on 
which eves were resolutely fastened. 

84 


Organization 


Nor was this pervading spirit related 
to matters pitched forward into a dis- 
tant future. Rather it arose in a sense 
of great things already in the process 
of unfolding. The men whom Pendle- 
ton met, pointed to that which had al- 
ready been done; to capital that had 
been raised ; a million of dollars, which 
by shrewd investment had become two ; 
to an organization, also, which already 
was' compact as an army and solid as a 
bank. 

As gathering in these wide ambitions, 
there was the idea of an organization— 
an organization not dissimilar, indeed, 
in its beginning from many others, but 
emphasizing its new character and its 
greater place by the magnitude of its 
aims and the breadth of its methods 
and its activities ; an organization 
whose foundations should be deep and 

85 


A Knight of the Toilers 

sound; whose purposes should be com- 
prehensive ; whose strength should 
match itself against those great institu- 
tions of finance and commerce which so 
long had held the richness of the 
country in their dominating grip; an 
organization whose arms would reach 
forth in masterly control of many chan- 
nels of profit, which erstwhile had been 
a direct tax on the great army of the 
world ^s toilers, and whose power might 
command with as much freedom and as 
much justice as the power of other cor- 
porations had commanded, and dictate, 
even as the power of the few had dic- 
tated for long. 

It was far from the nature of Pen- 
dleton to give undue weight to vague 
statements or to wild rumors. He had 
long been accustomed also to ^Tig talk,” 
and accustomed as well to brush it vig- 
86 


Organization 

orously aside when its tendency was to 
obscure a clear line of practical action. 
And as, just now, the whole passionate 
determination of his nature was ab- 
sorbed singly in the very definite busi- 
ness of an immediate strike, more than 
ever would he have made short work of 
this singular talk that came to him, if 
that had been possible. Very clearly, 
however, it was to the sway which these 
new ideas had obtained that the prog- 
ress of Pendleton’s own movement had 
been so abruptly arrested. This was a 
practical fact— and an obstinate one. 
And these ideas still formed the barrier 
to that advancement which he had yet 
to work out. If for no other reason 
than this, these were matters, there- 
fore, with which Pendleton must 
reckon, and with which he must deal 
wisely and carefully. Moreover, the 

87 


A Knight of the Toilers 

words of these many men with whom he 
came in contact were too solidly put. 
They were too thoroughly representa- 
tive of strong wills and of vigorous 
faiths. 

Yet of greater significance than the 
sway of these ideas as such, was the 
figure of the man with whom these ideas 
originated, and from whom they de- 
rived their authoritative value— a man 
who stood, now, somewhat mysteriously 
apart, working through machinery very 
perfectly adapted to his work, and with 
knowledge at his hand to the very 
smallest detail of everything that per- 
tained to mines and miners, to mining 
operations or operators ; a man, who, is- 
suing orders, effecting changes, com- 
manding every obedience, and every 
confidence, was a governing force, with- 
in his own province, of little less than 
88 


Organization 

absolute power; a man with limitless 
ambitions, and with strength well 
matched to the boldness of his plans. 

Strive against it as he might, this 
figure— seen through the eyes of these 
men, to whom it was as that of the 
magic creator of a new order of things 
—assumed, even to Pendleton’s mind, 
dimensions of a strangely impressive 
character. 

Shortly, however, Pendleton essayed 
to gather himself together anew— sub- 
ordinating these new things as best he 
might. His belief in the opportunity 
that lay in the immediate strike was too 
strong to be easily dislodged. And 
there was the further fact that such 
prominence and power as he was him- 
self to retain, would depend upon the 
success of those plans for which he was 
the sponsor. 


89 


X. 


At the Hampton head-quarters the 
days were busy ones. Trevor’s rooms 
—extended now to include the floor 
above— were constantly fllled with men. 
And of these men none lacked long for 
tasks with which to be occupied. 

In the rooms on the upper floor— 
which had taken on the aspect of a suite 
of commercial offices— young men were 
bending over invoices, bills of lading, 
and other documents of a like kind. 

Below, men of a different type waited 
their turn for a talk with the new 
leader, received their orders, and went 
forth in the execution of them. 

In the room apart, Trevor himself, 
in a turning chair behind the large, 
square, flat-topped desk, sat and worked 
and planned. 


90 


Organization 

It was into this latter room that Pen- 
dleton in due time was ushered. 

He came in aggressively. Something, 
however, in Trevor ^s greeting— a gra- 
cious warmth in the manner, an honest 
frankness in the piercing eye— disarmed 
the spirit of antagonism at once. This 
was not the manner of man, Pendleton 
found himself thinking, whom he had 
expected to find. There was nothing 
here, indeed, that quite answered either 
to the ideas which he had himself 
formed of his rival or to the notions of 
him that were imparted by the talk that 
circulated in Hampton. Pendleton’s 
chief thought, for the moment, was that 
here was a man with whom he would 
choose to be on terms of closest friend- 
ship. 

And yet a moment more, and Trevor’s 
sharp turn to business warned Pendle- 

91 


A Knight of the Toilers 

ton that here, nevertheless, was one who 
would always move quickly to the place 
of command. Here, indeed, was an eye 
that swept the field of affairs at a 
glance, and, from the mass of things, 
disentangled that one thing that was 
best, and seized it. Pendleton found 
himself refiecting that this man was one 
who knew what he wanted; admitting 
also, involuntarily, that he was bound to 
get it. 

The strike cannot go on,’’ Trevor 
said, abruptly. 

Against the finality in the voice, Pen- 
dleton, with a certain reawakening 
anger, found himself struggling half- 
hopelessly. 

It must,” he managed to reply. 

No,” said Trevor. 

Why? ” Pendleton asked, rather 
blindly. 


92 


Organization 

Because,” Trevor replied,” we 
want that twenty millions of dollars.” 

Twenty millions? ” 

This directness was more than Pen- 
dleton was prepared for. A strike, in- 
deed, would cost twenty millions— 
likely— might, indeed, cost much more. 
But— 

He fell back involuntarily on the 
phrases which he had earlier rehearsed. 

The opportunity of a generation,” 
he said, lies in a strike at the present 
juncture of affairs.” 

And then Pendleton hurried into a 
statement of what his meaning was. 
He set forth the position of the opera- 
tors in relation to the markets and the 
profits thereof ; his idea of the position 
of the public in relation to the opera- 
tors, and, especially, to the miners ; the 
advantageous position of the miners 

93 


A Knight of the Toilers 

with relation to the operators, with re- 
lation to the public, and with relation 
to the politicians of the country. He 
spoke rapidly as if under fear that some 
remark of Trevor’s would demolish his 
argument even before it had been ex- 
pressed. 

‘‘We have the operators,” he con- 
tinued, “ just where we want them.” 

“ First,” said Trevor, quietly, “ we 
must organize.” 

“ Organize? ” Pendleton demanded, 
“We are organized.” 

Trevor threw back his head. 

“Not the clumsily related mass of 
men that you have brought together,” 
he laughed. 

“My organization,” said Pendleton, 
hotly, “ will answer every purpose that 
we can aim at.” 

“ Not at all,” Trevor replied. 

94 


Organization 

‘‘We are organized/^ Pendleton per- 
sisted, doggedly. 

Trevor paused. In the very pause 
there was that which caused Pendleton 
to feel the weakness in his own posi- 
tion; the weakness in the cause for 
which he stood. 

“ Our foundations,’’ said Trevor, 
“ must be solid. 

“ Your sort of organization,” he went 
on, speaking in slow, even tones, “ is 
only a striking mob ; a ragged, beggarly, 
striking mob ; resourceless, unstable ; at 
best, winning victories by a chance, and 
then only at a cost which is far greater 
than the return ; otherwise, easily 
whipped— starved into submission or 
ruin. That is organization.” 

There was a significance in the man- 
ner in which the words were uttered 
that exceeded the significance in the 
words themselves. 


95 


A Knight of the Toilers 

And though Pendleton was conscious 
of an injustice even in the words— and 
still more in that which the manner im- 
plied, though he was conscious that his 
organization would compare not un- 
favorably with the best organizations of 
labor in the country, yet here and now, 
confronting this man who spoke with 
such finality, he was aware of a strange 
feeling of guilt and responsibility for 
the facts which were so conclusively 
stated. 

A gesture of Trevor’s hand sum- 
moned before his mind a picture of 
starving women and children ; of angry, 
sullen men demanding bread; of pros- 
trated towns and cities; of thereafter, 
a long period of wretched effort to re- 
cover lost ground. 

You forget,” he managed to say at 
last, you forget the public S5rmpathy 

96 


Organization 

that will now be back of ns— the force 
of a public opinion aroused in our 
favor. Look at that list,” he added. 

Pendleton took from his pocket a 
formidable looking paper. It was a 
long list of claims and grievances— a be- 
wildering list; claims for larger pay 
and for shorter hours; claims on ac- 
count of docking and of weight ; claims 
on powder charge— and, indeed, a full 
dozen other things. 

Trevor’s glance was mildly sarcastic. 

How many of these things do you 
expect to win out on? ” he asked. 

Something on each one— likely.” 
There was lameness in Pendleton’s 
tones. 

The thing is,” he added, more ener- 
getically, it will arouse public opinion 
—put public opinion back of us.” 

Trevor sat down sharply. 

7 97 


A Knight of the Toilers 

Look here/’ he said. His tone im- 
plied that mere discussion had gone 
about as far as was profitable. 

Public opinion? It’s worthless. 
Things worth doing are done despite 
public opinion, not because of it. When 
public opinion approves— that’s be- 
cause the thing is established and is 
commonplace. What we are to have 
now is an organization— with power. 
And as its basis— a capital of forty to 
fifty millions.” 

Pendleton gasped. 

Forty to fifty millions! ” he ex- 
claimed. 

Whether it was the sum of money or 
whether it was the authoritative voice 
of Trevor, he felt that he was losing his 
bearings. It was with some difficulty 
that he retained hold of that point of 
view which was his own. 

98 


Organization 

“ Forty millions out of this lot of 
struggling miners? ’’ he said. 

‘‘ You,” Trevor replied, sharply, 

would waste half of that on this 
strike. As much again on the next— 
and on the next.” 

“ No,” said Pendleton, not waste 
it.” 

“ Spend it, then— if you prefer.” 

But Pendleton was finding himself. 
^‘And to good purpose,” he said. 
‘‘ Every sacrifice made puts the scale of 
wages—” 

Higher? ” Trevor rising, inter- 
rupted. 

Yes. You get fifty cents added to 
the scale of wages and are proud— not 
seeing that you spend one dollar to get 
it. It will be to the point to handle the 
dollar so that it will become two; the 
two so that they will grow into four. 

99 


A Knight of the Toilers 

Then— well make the scale of wages— 
what is right. 

‘‘ Here/’ he proceeded, sharply. He 
sat down and wrote a few figures and 
their explanations. The memoran- 
dum he handed to Pendleton. ‘ ‘ There ’s 
our forty millions,” he said. 

And as Pendleton studied the figures 
they seemed, indeed, simple enough. 

But—” Pendleton began. 

These other claims of yours,” 
Trevor said, ‘‘ well settle on our own 
motion.” 

Yet understanding came to Pendleton 
but slowly. Not at once was he to ad- 
mit, even with Trevor standing over 
him, even with the many things which 
in the previous twenty-four hours he 
had heard, still present to his mind— 
not at once was he to admit that the 


100 


Organization 

organization which he had led, had 
failed so lamentably; nor, at once, was 
he to grasp the fact that the organiza- 
tion had wasted millions on millions of 
money. 

And even if this were all true, it still 
remained necessary for him to under- 
stand how it was proposed for the fu- 
ture to get hold of the millions that were 
ordinarily spent— or wasted— so that 
they might be available as a capital 
fund, and how, especially, these mil- 
lions, so capitalized, could be used to 
better advantage. 

It’s impossible,” he said. 

Quickly then Trevor drew from a 
corner of a wide desk an array of neatly 
prepared memorandums ; memoran- 
dums showing the losses which previous 
strikes had involved— the figures in 
retrospect, running up into startling 
101 


A Knight of the Toilers 

amounts ; memorandums summariz- 
ing the history of strikes, not only 
among the Peranian miners but else- 
where as well, and in which were tabu- 
lated on the debit side, the amounts 
which were lost in wages, the much 
smaller but still formidable sums which 
were directly spent in costs and ex- 
penses ; and, on the credit side, the rela- 
tively small amounts which those gains 
in wages figured up, where alleged or 
nominal victories had been won. 

Pendleton here, indeed, would have 
paused for argument; paused to point 
out that apart from any directly calcu- 
able gains which organized labor had 
made, apart from results which were 
reducible to figures, there were moral 
effects to be reckoned with, which or- 
ganization and agitation had brought to 
pass. 


102 


Organization 

But Trevor, fluent, even voluble 
when he chose, as on the other side, 
when the occasion called for it, he was 
calm and deliberate, hurried on. The 
matter, he said, was, and must be, 
strictly one of flgures; of dollars and 
cents ; of deflnitely calculable gains. 
Not otherwise was a business matter 
ever to be reckoned with. 

Then followed further memoran- 
dums ; memorandums showing the 
power implied by the massing of sums 
such as had been spent, and not less, 
the power which in time would come to 
other and associated organizations of 
labor as well as to the organization of 
Peranian miners itself ; the power which 
the associated organizations of labor 
could array against the powers of fi- 
nance, and commerce, and corporation, 
which now were on trial: memoran- 

103 


A Knight of the Toilers 

dums also indicating the lines of pos- 
sible investment and emplo3nnent of 
these sums— and the profits to be there- 
by gained; and memorandums show- 
ing the probable dimensions to which 
these sums, once massed, would with 
certainty grow. 

The figures, by the very bigness which 
attached to them, were such inevitably 
as stirred the imagination. With the 
indisputable veracity that appeared 
now to lay in them, they were such also 
as must grip the thought. Pendleton 
was forced to carefully consider. 

And standing before him was this 
man to whom all these figures, which 
to Pendleton himself, after all, served 
chiefiy to recall the bitterness of des- 
perate struggles, the disappointments 
and humiliations which alone had re- 
sulted from valiantly fought battles, 

104 : 


Organization 

and the futile courage of thousands 
upon thousands of brave comrades who 
had met crushing defeats— standing be- 
fore him was this man to whom these 
figures implied only a calculated and 
calculable business transaction— who, 
cool and hard, was figuring to manipu- 
late a great “ deal;” who had before 
handled transactions in which vast sums 
of money were involved, and was as 
ready to handle them again— handle 
them as well under one set of conditions 
as another. 

There were, of course, questions 
which Pendleton was bound to put, ob- 
jections which he was moved to make. 
But an objection was scarcely advanced 
than out of the clear horizon of Trevor’s 
plans the objection melted away into 
the pit of weak and cowardly things; 
nor a question asked, than out of the il- 

105 


A Knight of the Toilers 

limitable resources of facts at Trevor’s 
command, it was overwhelmed. 

And as, from time to time, Pendle- 
ton recurred to that idea which had 
dominated him, of the opportunity 
which the time offered for a successful 
strike, Trevor’s words became conclu- 
sive, final. 

The organization first, he com- 
manded. 

At last Trevor extended his hand and 
rose. While Pendleton, conscious that 
the strength which had seemed to in- 
here in his own cause, seemed now to be 
lost, found himself ushered to the door. 

Think it over,” Trevor said. 


106 


XI. 


Those three upper rooms at the 
Trevor head-quarters, so much like the 
office of a large mercantile establish- 
ment, had their definite place in the 
plans that were now under way. 

Earlier, when Trevor was newly 
come to the Peranian regions, he had 
observed the rude, shack-like buildings, 
constructed on cheap and otherwise 
useless land, in which the business was 
conducted of many of those Com- 
pany stores, in which the miners had 
for a long time been compelled to trade 
—infamously managed businesses, it 
was said, in which these miners had 
been coerced by their employers into 
payment of outrageous prices for in- 
ferior supplies, and into which each 
month the miner’s wage was swallowed 

lOY 


A Knight of the Toilers 

whole; while still, besides, the club of 
balance unpaid hung over their resist- 
less heads. 

Trevor had been quick to probe such 
a business as this to its bottom; quick 
to understand its character and its re- 
lationship to the miners of the region. 
He had discovered the large margin 
which the business afforded, the im- 
mense profits which it yielded. Nor, 
when he had learned that which was to 
be learned, was he in the least surprised 
that the ^^coal barons’’ had millions to 
their credit, and that they lived in pala- 
tial homes. He was quick also to un- 
derstand the very simple basis on which 
the business had been conducted; the 
slight cost for the operation of the 
stores, the cheap clerk service, the as- 
sured trade, the single management. 

The ease with which the business wa§ 
108 


Organization 

conducted, the assured custom which 
was commanded, and the slight costs of 
handling it, were facts that sunk deeply 
in his mind. His reflections here, led 
him later to a thought of the relative 
ease with which the profits of this ex- 
tensive business might be transferred 
from the pockets of the operators to the 
pockets of the miners themselves. 
Theirs the trade was— themselves, in- 
deed, should control that trade, and de- 
rive the advantages that were incident 
thereto. Nor was there a reason in 
sense, or in justice, or in expediency, 
why these thousands and tens of thou- 
sands of miners— these nearly two hun- 
dred thousand of miners and their 
families— should pay on the necessities 
of life which they consumed, this yearly 
tax of millions of money. Hather there 
was every reason why these millions 

109 


A Knight of the Toilers 

should annually be so reclaimed and re- 
stored, as to ease the hardships of the 
men and to improve their conditions in 
life. In Trevor’s mind the resolution 
was born that the millions, which this 
business represented, should sometime 
accrue to the benefit of the miner him- 
self. 

The time had now come when that 
resolution was to be carried into effect. 
The commercial invoices over which 
the young men in Trevor’s upper rooms 
were bending, covered vast quantities of 
merchandise which had been shipped by 
various’ manufacturers and producers. 
The bills of lading covering these ship- 
ments showed that the merchandise had 
been consigned to some half dozen 
points in Northern Perania, where 
stores, under the auspices of the organi- 
zation, though in the name of two of its 
no 


Organization 

relatively unknown members, were to 
be opened. 

These stores— unpretentious little 
places though they were— in charge 
of men whom Trevor had chosen out of 
the organization for the work, were to 
mark— supposing Trevor’s plans to be 
successful— the inauguration of a chain 
or system of stores through which all 
the usual necessities of the miners, 
from one end of the region to the other, 
were to be supplied through their own 
organization— and for that organiza- 
tion’s benefit, or for the benefit of its 
members. This was Trevor’s plan for 
bringing the profits of this vast business 
back to the pockets of the men them- 
selves. 

In arranging that these initial stores 
should be opened, just at this time, 
Trevor had calculated, of course, .with 
111 


A Knight of the Toilers 

definite purpose. He was anxious, it is 
true, in any case, that the miners should 
gain the benefits which the enterprise 
implied— anxious whatever else might 
come, or might not come, that this 
great economic advantage might be 
made secure. But he was anxious also 
that the idea should be so presented to 
them, that he would be helped in getting, 
in particular, two ideas safely and 
solidly lodged in the minds of the men. 

He wished, first, to make the oc- 
casion the illustrating emphasis of 
what a moderate capital invested in 
the interest of the men would yield. 
Looking to this end, an announcement 
was issued and circulated throughout 
the region. This announcement pointed 
out : That a saving might be effected 

to the miners, through these stores, that 
would average, taking all in all, some 
112 


Organization 

thirty per cent, on their expenditures; 
or when the half dozen stores already 
opened had become the thirty or more 
which it was desired to open, a gain 
would be effected which, for the solid 
body of Peranian miners, would repre- 
sent something near twenty-five mil- 
lions of dollars every year.” 

With the emphasis now given to the 
advantage that lay here, the first real 
sway of the Trevor idea began. Until 
this time the men of the Northern sec- 
tion had yielded to the personality of 
Trevor. What he had wished had been 
done because it was he who had wished 
it. What he had advocated had been* 
accepted because it was he who had ad- 
vocated it. And even now, likely 
enough, the idea that this announcement 
had put forth would not have taken such 
immediate hold had there not been back 

113 


8 


A Knight of the Toilers 

of the announcement the personality of 
Trevor, and the solid Northern organi- 
zation which that personality had 
brought into being. 

Nevertheless, by now, an idea, as' 
such, began to take great hold on the 
minds of the miners. And that not 
only in the North, where Trevor was 
revered, but in the South as well, where 
Trevor himself was but little known, or 
not known at all. Call it economy, or 
call it gain, the twenty-five millions of 
dollars a year which Trevor promised 
to return to the pockets of the miners 
stood out as a great, and significant, 
and impressive fact. 

And this fact was the more signifi- 
cant because it lay so simply and so 
truly in the nature of the case. Not a 
miner in Perania lacked knowledge of 
the great profits which had been thus 

114 


Organization 

harvested from his toil. Not a miner 
in Perania failed to understand that 
great profits still remained to be har- 
vested. And to no mind could it seem 
other than reasonable that these miners 
should stretch forth their hands to get 
that great advantage which was so 
easily and so naturally within their 
reach. 

To handle such business, it was true, 
certain capital was necessary. But the 
returns which the investment of such 
capital would bring, would rival the im- 
mense gains of the most lucratively in- 
vested capital of the country. 

And the announcement also pointed, 
in contrast, to the value which such a 
business gain as this implied, in com- 
parison with any possible return from 
an immediate strike, or from any strike 
whatever, under conditions such as then 
existed. 


115 


A Knight of the Toilers 

‘‘A saving of thirty per cent, on ex- 
penditures,^’ the announcement empha- 
sized, was rather a greater victory 
than an increase of twenty per cent, in 
wages would be— could that in any way 
be had. As a matter of fact an increase 
of even ten per cent, in their wages was 
problematical. The advantage that had 
been pointed out, and which was here 
proposed, was secure— could be had at 
once— and could be had without waste 
or cost whatever.” This was one ad- 
vantage of subscription to a capital 
fund. 

But with still greater insistence did 
Trevor emphasize the relation which 
such an enterprise as the system of 
stores would bear to the powerful or- 
ganization which it was now proposed 
to build up ; to make clear that in a sub- 
scription to a capital fund for the great 
116 


Organization 

organization, not only that the men thus 
provided the capital for an enterprise 
that would yield immense returns, but 
also the means fox a growth in the or- 
ganization to still larger, still more 
powerful dimensions. 

The announcement emphasized the 
simple and direct method, which, in the 
first place, the system of stores provided 
for adding largely, without further de- 
mands on the men, to the capital which 
a great and effective organization re- 
quired. (For it was made clear that 
the profits of the first year should be 
held as part of the capital which it was 
the organization’s purpose to have- 
bonds being issued against these profits, 
redeemable on any occasion of need, or 
when an individual ceased to be a 
miner.) Twenty-five millions a year 
was, perchance, some hundred and 

117 


A Knight of the Toilers 

forty dollars for each, individual miner ; 
but twenty-five millions added to the 
capital of the organization added a 
weapon of an immeasureable power. 
The announcement pointed out, also, 
the pertinent place such a system of 
stores would occupy as a base of sup- 
plies on the occasion of the greater in- 
dustrial conflicts which were yet to 
come. It pointed out how the interest 
of such a vast business would also relate 
the organization to other factors in the 
life of the general public, and thus bring 
to it greater dignity, and importance, 
and consideration. And it suggested, 
as well, what this chain of stores might 
well imply as a precursor of other en- 
terprises, which a great and substantial 
organization might rightly undertake. 

All in all what Trevor thus brought 

forward was well calculated to advance 
118 


Organization 

his purpose. The thought oi the gam 
of twenty-five millions a year disposed 
many thousands of men, apart from 
those who had already been under his 
infiuence to espouse his cause. The im- 
pression which the prospects of mil- 
lions of money ahead created, spread 
ever more widely, while the vista of 
further advantages, of which this was 
the promise, wrought greatly on every 
side. 


119 


XII. 


MEANWHILE;, the efforts of Pendle- 
ton had come practically to a standstill. 
What with the seductive influence 
which the Trevor plans exercised over 
the imagination, what with the direct 
effect of the launching of the stores, and 
what with the stamp of reality which 
Trevor’s personality gave to all the 
ideas’ for which he stood, it was a diffi- 
cult matter for Pendleton quite to 
brush these things aside— a difficult 
matter, also, in light of those rep- 
resentations of the waste which a strike 
involved, for Pendleton to as heartily 
satisfy himself concerning the wisdom 
of one as it was necessary that he 
should. 

While, therefore, Trevor’s lieuten- 
ants were hurrying here and there, pen- 
120 


Organization 

etrating the southern regions and urg- 
ing the men to come out on the Trevor 
side, while Trevor himself was making 
a number of trips into the territory in 
which his rival had been completely in 
control, and while, at Trevor’s head- 
quarters, activities of many kinds were 
in progress, Pendleton was sitting by 
very quietly, fighting the battle out in 
his’ own mind— his lieutenants waiting 
patiently until the chief should speak. 

The problem was difficult to solve. 
Millions of money— that was the prom- 
ise. Millions of money as the weapon 
of a solidly strong organization of men 
—nothing, of course, could have been 
more appealing. Millions of money 
with which to adjust his differences 
with the lords of capital, and to fight 
the battles of labor. The thought of 
it offered at least some apology for his 
121 


A Knight of the Toilers 

failure in the interview with Trevor, to 
represent his own cause as he had in- 
tended to do. 

And yet, apart from Trevor and 
from Trevor’s authoritative command, 
Trevor’s plans, in Pendleton’s mind, 
lost their reality; lost their force and 
substance ; became impractical. One 
could think of Trevor himself as deal- 
ing naturally and simply with vast af- 
fairs, raising the great sums of money 
of which he had spoken, handling com- 
plicated situations, engineering large 
transactions, and forcing brilliant tri- 
umphs. One could easily think of him, 
indeed, as one of the money kings of the 
time. That, perchance, was what he 
easily might have been. Or, one could 
think of him as the over-lord of vast 
private enterprises, the representative 
of great capital power. 

122 


Organization 

The difficulty for Pendleton was to 
think of Trevor’s plans as working 
naturally or wisely in the affairs of an 
organization of struggling laboring 
men. The great organization which 
was proposed with its millions of 
money, its varied grasp on affairs, its 
tremendous power, involved too many 
complications and too many dangers. 
It fitted in but badly with Pendleton’s 
knowledge of the men who would com- 
prise that organization’s membership- 
poor, ignorant, reckless, sometimes law- 
less, and always unreliable. With 
whatsoever confidence he could think 
of Trevor, he was unable to adjust him- 
self to the thought of this’ mass of men 
exercising the power which such an or- 
ganization as this would imply. What 
he thus forsesaw was division and 
strife— and worse. 


123 


A Knight of the Toilers 

Or should these plans for a time be 
successfully carried out the result 
would be to stimulate unwise encroach- 
ments on the rights of the employing 
class; encroachments on that which, as 
Pendleton thought, was and must re- 
main, the distinct province of the cap- 
italistic few. Nor could these en- 
croachments mean aught for the men 
ultimately but disadvantage. 

Pendleton could, indeed— and did— 
think of this great aggregate of men 
as begging, pleading, and struggling 
for greater and ever greater concessions 
from the powerful few who controlled 
the great industries in which the riches 
of Perania lay. He could— and did— 
think of organizing these men and re- 
organizing them over and over again, 
to urge, demand, to compel from the 
employers more liberal wages and more 
generous privileges. 

124 


Organization 

What he found difficult was to think 
of this aggregate of laboring men in 
the position, not of supplication, but of 
command; to think of them in a posi- 
tion where their wills should dominate 
(for this, indeed, was what the great or- 
ganization must mean if it meant any- 
thing) ; to think of that was to think of 
the existing basis of the general wel- 
fare as being at stake. That was not 
what Pendleton wanted. Nor, as he be- 
lieved, did the advancement of the 
miner’s interests lie along any such 
road as this implied. 

From the standpoint of that which, 
in his mind, was to work the advance- 
ment of the interests of the men, he was 
clear enough. He could recognize the 
cost of recurring industrial conflicts— 
in long stretches of idle time, in loss of 
vast sums in wages, in large drains on 

125 


A Knight of the Toilers 

the treasury of friendly sister organiza- 
tions, in enormous drafts on the courage 
and endurance of the men; he could 
recognize these costs and believe them 
justified. He could distinctly commit 
himself to a prolonged, even perpetual, 
policy of strikes; could say— and he did 
say— that whatever gains were thus 
made to-day still greater gains re- 
mained to be made to-morrow— and by 
the same method; that a ten per cent, 
wage increase must be followed by 
another ten per cent.; that the adjust- 
ment of one grievance must be followed 
by a demand for another privilege; 
that with every step in the growth of 
the country’s prosperity, with every 
step in the prosperity of the employing 
class, it would be the duty of the men to 
organize, agitate, and demand their 

share. And the general philosophy 
126 


Organization 

wMcli sustained him in this position 
and which, until now, had remained 
rather sub-consciously in his mind, was 
in the thinking of these critical days 
acquiring a definite form and becoming 
capable of simple, positive expression. 

The greatly capitalized organization 
however— the organization capitalized 
with millions of money, as Pendleton 
thought began to clear, seemed to him to 
promise only confusion and complica- 
tion. And for this position, too, Pen- 
dleton’s sub-conscious philosophy was 
shaping itself in practical terms. 

It was one thing to compel the re- 
dress of grievances and the relief of in- 
justices ; one thing to risk much that un- 
scrupulous exactions and tyrannies 
might be removed. For this Pendleton 
had long fought. It was also one 
thing to demand a steadily increasing 

127 


A Knight of the Toilers 

share in that richness which the earth 
gave forth— as much through the labors 
of the common men as through the 
management of the favored few; one 
thing, indeed, to adopt as a guiding 
principle, that with every gain in wealth 
which came to the directing minority, a 
pro-rata for the laboring majority must 
be made secure. This, too, was in Pen- 
dleton’s purpose. 

But a line of demarcation appeared 
with any proposition which implied in- 
terference with the enterprise and ac- 
tivity of those whose greater knowledge 
and greater development, whose 
stronger brains and stronger character 
were necessary to the conduct of indus- 
tries’ and the welfare of existing 
things. And this, Trevor’s organiza- 
tion seemed of necessity to involve. 

And in the judgment to which he had 
128 


Organization 

come, Pendleton felt that he was oh 
strong ground. Whatever the wrongs 
which the men had endured whose cause 
he represented— or should have still to 
endure, whatever their grievances and 
whatever their injustices, yet he felt 
bound to recognize that their capabili- 
ties fitted them only for the menial work 
of the world. 

And, on the other hand, whatever the 
selfishness in the ruling few, whatever 
the tyrannies which their selfishness 
led them to impose, yet, also, these men 
whose brains and strength had brought 
them into position of command and 
power, were in these positions as if by 
divine right. They were necessary 
to the prosperity of industry and to the 
stability of society. 

And by virtue of this more impor- 
tant part which they played, and were 

P 129 


A Knight of the Toilers 

fitted to play, they were entitled to the 
vaster compensations which they ex- 
acted, were entitled to the bountiful 
command of the earth’s richness which 
they enjoyed. 

Through such reasonings as these, 
Pendleton again got such grasp on the 
position which he had occupied earlier, 
as to restore his singleness of mind and 
singleness of purpose. To go on with 
Trevor’s schemes was to go on to ulti- 
mate disaster. To allow these schemes, 
on the other hand, to blind the eyes of 
the men to the definite advantages that 
were attainable was a crime. Nor did 
Pendleton doubt that he could now con- 
vincingly present his position even to 
Trevor himself. 


130 


XIII. 


What Pendleton perhaps had failed 
to consider was that Trevor, too, might 
have a philosophy underlying his plans 
and his actions. 

Trevor had his philosophy ; a philoso- 
phy which he could express as suc- 
cinctly as he could state figures or out- 
line policies— which lay in truth, as con- 
vincingly before his mind, as the field 
of possibilities and opportunities lay 
serviceably within his insight. 

Trevor had his philosophy ; a philoso- 
phy in which, if need should be that he 
should give it expression, he would in- 
dict, to begin with, even as Pendleton 
would indict, that class who were the 
employing class, or the exploiting class 
—according as one might choose to call 
them— that class who were the class of 

131 


A Knight of the Toilers 

capital, and of power— power arrogated 
or acquired, as one might choose to 
think. 

And as far as Trevor was concerned, 
one was quite at liberty to think as one 
chose, so long only, as that same liberty 
in Trevor himself were not held in ques- 
tion. 

And Trevor would formulate his in- 
dictment with a cool and steady calm- 
ness, which would contrast advan- 
tageously with the hot ardor which, at 
such moment, would excite the brain of 
Pendleton. Only, it is certain, Trevor’s 
indictment would sink more deeply, and 
comprehend more wisely, and stand 
more steadfastly. 

For Trevor would indict not only the 
integrity of that favored class in whose 
power the richness of the country lay, 
but,, as well, their skill in management 

132 


Organization 

of those agencies through which this 
richness was converted into available 
forms. 

And this Trevor would do, not only 
with abundant grasp of the evidence 
which was made available whenever 
even the simplest investigation touched 
the affairs of corporate power— rail- 
road, industrial, assurance, finance or 
government ; but also with the fine and 
detailed knowledge which personal ex- 
perience had given him of the elemental 
forces at work in these channels, of 
which forces that favored class of 
power was the embodiment— forces of 
greed and graft, from which, as of 
natural law, naught could come but rob- 
beries and corruptions, and naught did 
or would. 

Nor in his indictment would Trevor 
grant the qualifying clause, of which 

133 


A Knight of the Toilers 

Pendleton felt the need, whereby the 
superior brains and stronger char- 
acter of these men might be saved for 
the service of industry and the stability 
of society. Rather, he would empha- 
size the essential simplicity of the ser- 
vice, which, for the most part, the 
functions which they assumed to dis- 
charge required— befogged and be- 
clouded, indeed, for the present, by that 
spirit of greed and graft, which put 
men’s hands persistently at each other’s 
throats and pockets, and, by the lawless- 
ness and crime which— truly— required 
skill and ability to conceal. 

And he would emphasize as well the 
impossibility that these channels of 
greed and graft should ever produce, 
either the character or the brains to fit 
in wisely with that service which the 
Common Weal required. 

134 


Organization 

While Trevor’s philosophy, however, 
might begin with such indictment as 
this— and to that extent find itself in ac- 
cord with Mr. Pendleton— yet with 
these things it would concern itself but 
little. The positive note in Trevor’s 
thought began with a large apprecia- 
tion of that which lay in the hearts, and 
not less in the capacities, of the vast 
mass of men; of the possibilities that 
lay in them— given light and given op- 
portunity; of the integrity that lay in 
them, and the loyalty— given trust. 

And beyond this Trevor’s philosophy 
would go on bravely to recognize that at 
best the whole mass of material things 
must find its single use in subordina- 
tion to the welfare of that mass of men 
which, in truth, was humanity— the re- 
clamation, the redemption, the service 
of the downmost. That which would 

135 


A Knight of the Toilers 

do this most quickly and most directly 
—with least of diversion or of perver- 
sion, with least waste in extortionate 
bounties to the few, with least misdirec- 
tion in vulgar extravagances to the 
favored, with least obstruction and de- 
lay by plots, and thieveries, and mis- 
managements, and rascalities— was 
right. 

And to that right— should legislative 
measures interfere, or laws of congress, 
or needs of economic systems, then 
these must bend, not that. This was 
right, and this right must be persis- 
tently upheld. 

Yet not with philosophy at all was 
Trevor now greatly concerned— but 
with action; not with the theory of 
what should be, but with decision of 
what must be. The programme of the 

136 


Organization 

northern leader was definitely formed. 
The million of dollars which the North- 
ern Unions had raised was now two. 
The tide of passionate demand for an 
immediate adjustment of grievances, 
that Pendleton had excited, was fairly 
met by the prospect which Trevor had 
put forth of greater gains in peaceful 
ways than strikes could win. The 
clamor had subsided. The subscrip- 
tion was fairly assured. Beyond that 
were the prospective profits of the 
stores. All told, Trevor’s forty mil- 
lions for the first year was in sight— 
and, indeed, much more. 

Naked, indeed, as the idea of the ad- 
vantage of capital had stood forth, 
tyrannically as the lesson of it had 
always been stung into the veins of the 
men, yet now for the first time were 
these men to see the advantage of 

137 


A Knight of the Toilers 

capital in their own service. Now, how- 
ever, they were to see it. Now they 
were to see that that capital, which, as 
master over them, could be fiercest, 
harshest, most relentless of tyrants, 
could also be unto them the most nimble, 
and subtle, and versatile of servants. 

And as Trevor sat with his mem- 
orandiuns, his determination compre- 
hended more than forty millions of the 
first year ; beyond that, was steadily in- 
creasing gains and steadily increasing 
power. And with this increasing 
power the juster distribution of wealth 
—less' to the few, more to the struggling. 
That was the motive which would sus- 
tain in whatever contests might come. 

Nor was he without the vision of a 
further prospect to which his ideas 
would press forward. Other organiza- 
tions of labor should build up their 

138 


Organization 

power even as this one, and the allied 
strength of these great organizations 
would usher in a new era of material 
conditions. 

When Pendleton came, the welcome 
that greeted him was as gracious as 
that which he had received before. 
But when he essayed to argue and to 
debate, he was made to realize that the 
period for this, with Trevor, was de- 
cisively passed. Discussion, now, was 
deftly declined. 

There is the meeting of delegates,’’ 
said Trevor. 

Yes.” 

‘‘We shall yield the decision to 
them. ’ ’ 


139 


XIV. 


Many things, in very truth, were said 
in that meeting of delegates— ^ a gather- 
ing in which the southern section was 
as well represented as that of north, 
and in which, indeed, the majority 
might reasonably have been supposed 
to lean to the leadership of Pendleton. 

And this meeting, in its character of 
precursor to the great convention which 
labor was to assemble and to decide the 
issues at stake, was one of much impor- 
tance and significance. 

When Trevor addressed these men, 
however, he confined his talk at first to 
the emphasis of a single issue. 

If it were true, so Trevor said, 
if it were true, as Pendleton had 
claimed, that the miners themselves 
were the producers of the wealth of the 

140 


Organization 

region, then their duty was clear— to 
take that which was their own. Or, if 
capital had been the power through 
which the robbers had been able to 
steal, to oppress, and to tyrannize, 
then that power of capital was the one 
power which the men must acquire. 

Indeed, capital was the one thing 
which deserved attention— the problem 
for the men of amassing capital of their 
own, and of putting that capital into 
active service in such manner as would 
bring to the men ever increasing ad- 
vantages and benefits. 

Now-a-days, in truth, neither health, 
nor virtue, nor life, nor liberty, secured 
its title until capital made its grant. 
The only way to make terms with capi- 
tal was to control some of it. 

The habit of denouncing certain men 
who had brought a little capital to- 
rn 


A Knight of the Toilers 

gether and set it to work, and had then 
seen it augment itself by such leaps 
and bounds that the astounding result 
caused as much surprise to the men 
themselves as it caused amazement and 
perhaps anger to others— the habit of 
denouncing these men was, of course, as 
easy as, perhaps, it was natural. That 
habit of denunciation, however, had 
been somewhat overdone. It was well 
to remember that the fact that a few 
men had their iron grip on so much of 
all that made the land great and strong; 
that their power, ever seemingly insati- 
able, passed so rapidly from one point to 
another until it embraced almost every- 
thing; that within the State there had 
grown a force stronger than the State 
itself, which held the State largely at 
its mercy— all this was not so much due 
to vices in men who were capitalists— 
nor to virtues in them. 

142 


Organization 

The present point lay in the nature 
of capital as such. These men had 
reaped the benefits of capital which was 
massed and put to work. They were, 
in effect, tied to their capital ; that capi- 
tal whose very nature was growth, in- 
crease, multiplication, propagation, ex- 
tension ; that capital which was the one 
force whose integrity and whose growth 
were made sacred and inviolable by the 
laws of the land and the conditions of 
our civilization. 

There was no good reason, however, 
why that capital power should not shift 
itself from one set of men to another; 
no good reason why that capital power 
should not be transferred from the few 
to the many. Always, the trouble had 
mainly been, that the many had been 
blind to their possibilities and careless 
of the power that resided in them. 

143 


A Knight of the Toilers 

The lesson for the organized worker 
was simple enough. Capital was the 
supreme thing. The men before him— 
organized labor generally— backed their 
claims for greater share in the earth’s 
blessings only with their physical bulk. 
It was capital, however, alone, that 
reaped the advantage of the fruit of 
the natural forces at work in the world 
— of the God-given thing which is called 
the world’s prosperity. Except as 
capital was the angle-worm, fish of this 
kind would never be caught. To him 
that hath shall be given, and from him 
that hath not shall be taken away even 
that which he hath ’’—this olden, golden 
Word had in these days its particular 
application at just this point. 

The men must control capital, and 
they could. The way was open to 
them. It was simple. But very mani- 

144 


Organization 

festly the way was not along the line of 
that policy which had prevailed of 
scattering in irretrievable loss-five 
millions— ten— twenty millions of dol- 
lars. That was what a strike meant. 
The power of money in the service of 
the men would come as these millions 
were capitalized and started forth on 
the march of increase -and enlargement 
and power. 

The w'ays in which capital thus 
massed might be advantageously used 
had already been partly indicated. It 
was, on the one hand, the nature of capi- 
tal once brought together, to discover 
new places where it could be at work. 
And, on the other hand, it was already 
apparent that if labor was to meet suc- 
cessfully the crisis which it already 
faced, it was necessary that its resources 
of money should be ample. 

10 146 


A Knight of the Toilers 

For an hour, calmly, directly, Trevor 
unfolded the idea which he had thus in- 
troduced— indicating its various appli- 
cations in the affairs of Peranian 
miners, suggesting its diverse possi- 
bilities, and forecasting its future. 
There were in his words no passionate 
appeals to the heart— no stimulations 
to the emotions, yet the simple strength 
of a new idea engaged the minds of the 
men, and, perhaps, inflamed their im- 
aginations, as no eloquent ringing of the 
old phrases on the old lines could ever 
do. Even a recognition of hardships in 
the lives of the men before him, and of 
their sufferings, and their title to jus- 
tice and remedy, was omitted. Trevor 
was the cool man presenting coolly a 
proposition which was wisely sound. 

Yet— perhaps, because always, the 
man with the fact will be heard, or, per- 

146 


Organization 

haps, by reason of his own engaging per- 
sonality— Trevor, as he stood there and 
spoke, seemed to draw all into the circle 
of his intimate confidence and to im- 
part to all a serene and settled faith in 
that for which he stood. Even Pendle- 
ton himself, heeding the speaker with 
no less intentness than the others, 
found himself at last assenting to that 
which was proposed. 

From the time of this meeting and 
thereafter, the clamor of contending 
forces subsided entirely. The idea of 
divisions and antagonisms was sub- 
merged by the one idea that steadily 
dominated the minds of all. A new or- 
ganization was to exist which should 
stand for the larger advancement of 
the interests of the Peranian miners; 
an organization which, with a wide 
sphere of activity, should grow as 

147 


A Knight of the Toilers 

other institutions in the history of the 
country and in the history of the rise of 
liberty had grown ; which should spread 
out its arms on many sides and lift up 
its head in dignity and power; which 
should act as the instrument through 
which the battles of the people should 
be fought; which would stand as the 
fortress in which they would find refuge 
and protection. 

Trevor had won his point. 

148 


Battle 




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BATTLE. 


XV. 

How? 

And how best ? 

These were the questions which the 
magnate pondered. 

^^At any rate/’ he muttered, some- 
how. That organization must be 
broken, smashed.” 

Pattison now was the directing figure 
in the great trust— the trust that owned 
the coal industries of* Perania. 

Coming as he did to his dominating 
position, just at this time when the Or- 
ganization of Miners was advancing 
rapidly along the lines of prosperity 
and power, which Trevor’s work had 

151 


A Knight of* the Toilers 

opened, it was a situation of great diffi- 
culty that he occupied. In the organi- 
zation of labor which he confronted, 
there was a menace of a distinctly new 
and unique character— a menace not 
alone to profits, or even to long main- 
tained rights and privileges. Rather it 
was a menace whose arrow pointed to 
the very vitals of the Trust ^’s life. 

Information had come to Mr. Patti- 
son concerning the business which this 
organization of Perania miners had 
been carrying on. Information had 
come— though not, in truth, until his 
own instincts had fully grasped the deep 
significance and meaning of the air of 
prosperity which in these days had 
marked the men. Then, indeed, infor- 
mation had come, because his own 
searching investigations had compelled 
it forth. And the information which 


152 


Battle 


these investigations had brought forth 
was complete and— astonishing. 

Even now the papers lay on Patti- 
son’s great desk— facts, figures, esti- 
mates. Glaring boldly from one docu- 
ment were figures which showed that 
the profit from these miners’ stores had 
been in six months $7,994,000. 

Gross business for 1st quar- 
ter $15,750,000 

Memo:— An average expen- 
diture for each worker of 
$30 per month. 

Gross business for 2d quar- 
ter $17,300,000 

Memo :— Business enlarged 
by outside patronage. 

Profit 1st quarter $3,934,000 

Profit 2d quarter $4,060,000 

Average of over 24 per 
cent, on gross business. 

So the item read. 


163 


A Knight of the Toilers 

There were other figures that dis- 
turbed Pattison no less ; figures showing 
that the organization had millions to in- 
vest quite apart from its stores— mil- 
lions shrewdly invested in securities 
whose value had vastly increased— and 
other millions so invested that the dis- 
agreeable fact stood forth that the or- 
ganization controlled some half dozen 
of the solid banks of Perania. 

That which concerned the magnate, 
as he contemplated these figures, was 
the fact that the substantial beginning 
which was thus set forth implied, of 
necessity (if not violently interfered 
with) , a growth and development whose 
extent was incalculable. He, too, 
could see, even as Trevor had seen be- 
fore Tiim, labor organizations whose 
wealth would fairly rival that of the 
great private corporations, whose 

154 


Battle 


power, moreover, would stand in pro- 
portions excessively larger. Pattison 
realized that the instinct of money con- 
servation, of co-operative accumulation 
of wealth, had been well planted in this 
mass of men. He realized that a strong 
leadership had enabled this mass of men 
to grasp practically that which had long 
stood as a beckoning ideal. 

As he thus reflected, he quivered as 
the vision flashed across his mind of 
that great fabric of corporate power 
and corporate control of men and af- 
fairs, of which to-day he was the repre- 
sentative, tottering and crumbling to 
its foundations; of another order of 
power rising in its stead, in which 
wealth was democratized— as politics 
had been, as education had been. In 
any case, he was sensitively awake to 
the fact that the dominance of his own 


155 


A Knight of the Toilers 

wealth stood now in gravest, most im- 
mediate jeopardy. How might the 
situation best be met ? 

There lay, indeed, in the corner of 
Pattison’s mind, a thought that the sur- 
est method of destroying the disturbing 
organization was to encourage it out 
into the sea of financial things. It 
seemed plausible to believe that the very 
wealth which it had now begun to boast 
was its own greatest danger; that the 
enterprises in which its wealth involved 
it, afforded the means for its swiftest 
punishment and downfall. 

Yet thoroughly discouraging to this 
thought, there was, to begin with, a 
wholesome fear of Trevor’s own keen- 
ness and skill. Even if the bait that 
might be held out should be taken, it was 
by no means impossible that line and 
pole would follow. It was within 

156 


Battle 


Trevor’s capacities to meet Pattison 
even on his own ground. While his 
knowledge of the weak points in Patti- 
son ’s armor, his grasp of the intricacies 
of corporation affairs, was calculated 
to work disaster to all that the great 
Trust of Operators represented. 

And, in his own affairs, Trevor was 
one who knew when to be cautious as 
well as when to be bold. There were, 
indeed, no indications that the organi- 
zation, of which Trevor was the head, 
was likely to venture into channels 
where its own power was other than in- 
herently complete. 

The problem narrowed itself speedily 
enough. The right to employ whom 
one would, and the right not to em- 
ploy whom one chose not to employ, 
seemed still to Pattison one of those 
fundamental principles, one of those 
157 


A Knight of the Toilers 

inalienable rights, in behalf of which 
the sympathies of a whole nation must 
indisputably be enlisted. 

There had been times, indeed, when 
a compromise of this right had seemed, 
wise— had been dictated by the interest 
of the operators. There had been times 
when it was vastly cheaper to waive the 
point than to long argue it. There had 
been times when a long battle in its be- 
half would have been at the expense of 
immense profits, and at the expense, 
too, of that tremendous augmentation 
of power which time alone had been 
able to bring to pass. 

But in the presence of such a condi- 
tion as that which now threatened, the 
assertion of this right assumed a dif- 
ferent aspect and a different value. 
This right formed the issue on which 
a fight must be based. This was the 

158 


Battle 


issue, indeed, through which alone, the 
preservation of corporate power was 
possible. It was the issue, as well, 
through which the menacing organiza- 
tion might be demolished. 

As Pattison’s thought thus settled to 
steadiness, he began to be impatient for 
the action that should carry this de- 
cision into event. 

Break them? ’’ he said. That 
crowd must be smashed to hell.” 

He summoned a clerk. He dis- 
patched notes to those presidents of 
corporations who were allied with him. 

As the latter assembled, Pattison 
urged upon them the decision to which 
he had come, with the directness that 
was characteristic of him. 

a There is but one way,” he said. 

What is that? ” 

These mines must be free.” 


159 


A Knight of the Toilers 

There was a ring to the phrase that 
he liked. 

“We must take our stand for free 
labor. We must be rid of unions— of 
the domination of unions. These mines 
must be free.’’ 

“ That,” said Barnes, a cooler- veined 
man than Pattison, and one whose 
mind tended to wider observation, 
“ that, if they will let us.” 

“ Let us? ” demanded Pattison, and 
his voice trembled with anger, “ I tell 
you we must break them— smash them 
—stores, organization, and all. We 
have got to drive this gang out— every 
one of them— starve them out.” 

Here, surely, the issue lay. The con- 
sent that unions should exist up to a 
given point— that, of course, had been 
necessary. Their activity up to a given 
limit, pernicious though it was— that 
160 


Battle 


had been tolerated. The right to con- 
centration of power on the part of the 
operators required for its apology the 
apparent right of organization among 
laboring men. 

Now, however, a crisis had come. 
Nominal organization on the part of 
the men had become real. And with 
that organization towering over him of 
two hundred thousand awakened and 
resolute men, backed by their millions 
of money, Pattison knew that he was 
fighting for his very life. Whatever the 
difficulties, whatever the costs, the issue 
must be made and met. 

‘‘We must smash labor unions.” 

“Where?” Barnes asked, “where 
are our mines to be if we force that 
issue? ” 

“ We’ll bring workers in,” Pattison 

snapped. “ Free workers.” 

11 161 


A Knight of the Toilers 

With difficulty/’ said Barnes. 

^^And well break the unions.” 

The difficulties loomed forth never- 
theless. Nor were either Barnes or 
Hemphill slow in suggesting what these 
grave difficulties were. 

Don’t you understand? ” demanded 
Pattison. It’s our one chance. It’s 
what we must do. Are we to have an 
organization like that towering over us ? 
They have millions now. What will it 
be in another year? In two? In 
five? ” 

The fight is on,” said Hemphill. 

It was bound to come,” Barnes 
added. “ But let us work— warily.” 

We can work,” said Pattison, 
none too quickly.” 


162 


XVI. 


Work warily? There were some 
things, indeed, in which the magnate 
could work warily enough. As his 
visitors departed a malignant gleam 
came in Pattison’s eye. There was a 
weapon— for a moment he paused. 

Suddenly the man’s muscles became 
rigid, tense. A new sense of the very 
magnitude of the power that was in his 
own hands, a new vision of the illimit- 
able strength that was in the weapon 
which he now proposed to use, made his 
face livid. And then, with that irre- 
sponsibility of the mind that occurs 
when the nerves are highly wrought, 
and with that sensitiveness to dangers 
which comes also at such a time— sensi- 
tiveness even to dangers the most re- 
mote and unlikely— Pattison’s thought 

163 


A Knight of the Toilers 

glanced at the possibility, that that 
weapon whose value was so great, 
might be— could be— wrested from him. 
With this vision before him, Pattison 
sank to his chair, trembling. 

But such paroxysms with Pattison 
were as brief as they were rare. That 
weapon was safely his. His own hand 
firmly clutched that weapon. Nor 
should others wrest it from him. As 
his mind— steady now and single— 
rested on the thought of the absolute do- 
mination over men and over events 
which his control of the railroads gave 
him, as he rested in the thought that he 
held cities, towns, communities, all of 
Perania completely at his mercy, 
through this control which was his' of 
the very arteries of the nation’s life, the 
reverberating, chuckling laughter rolled 
out again— rolled out as it was accus- 

164 


Battle 


tomed to roll out when this magnate was 
quite sure that he had the joke on the 
other man. Pattison rang a bell. 

The man who now responded to the 
call was one whose precise position in 
the offices of the Trust it would have 
been hard to label. The desk at which 
he sat, when he sat before any, was 
more often vacant than occupied, and 
he himself was now here, now there— 
everywhere. Nor could many have told 
why he was here, why there, or any- 
where. Evans, nevertheless, was one of 
the magnate’s most skillful and most 
useful and most trusted agents. 

“ Those organization stores,” Patti- 
son said, get a lot of freight on our 
roads? ” 

Yes, sir.” 

Food stuffs— and so on? ” 

^‘Yes.” 


165 


A Knight of the Toilers 

Evans— begin to lose that stuff/’ 
Evans hesitated ; not, however, in any 
doubt of what was meant. The depen- 
dence of the miners’ stores on the rail- 
roads was apparent enough. Nor was 
it doubt of the method by which Patti- 
son intended that the supplies of the or- 
ganization should go astray. The side 
tracking of an enemy’s goods (or a com- 
petitor’s goods) was an old story in the 
history of the struggle for commercial 
domination. At the moment, however, 
doubt had entered Evans’ mind of the 
effectiveness of the move in the particu- 
lar circumstances. 

The moment’s delay stirred Pattison’s 
anger. 

You understand? ” he imperiously 
demanded. 

I see,” said Evans. 

The war is on,” Pattison concluded. 

166 


Battle 


And there were other things as well 
in which Pattison was able to work 
warily, even as Barnes had suggested. 
There were many preparations to be 
made, whose making moved naturally 
in channels of subterranean depth. 

Immense reserves of coal must be 
harbored— and this, at points where sus- 
picion of the purpose that was being 
carried out might be least awakened. 

Great reserves of capital must be 
provided, so that least of embarrass- 
ment might be encountered either in 
the management of properties, in the 
prosecution of the campaign, or in the 
manipulation, in the financial markets, 
of the listed values of the properties 
whose intrinsic value was now to en- 
counter so severe a test. 

And in diverse places at home and in 
countries across the seas, those plans 

167 


A Knight of the Toilers 

must be advanced which looked to the 
incoming of an army of new workers 
—an army of men through whom the 
Organization’s members were to be dis- 
placed, the Organization itself brought 
low, and, as Pattison expressed it, the 
condition of labor in Perania be made 
free.” 

That in these things Pattison was 
able to work warily, stealthily, was true 
enough. 

And none the less was it true that 
Pattison was able to work quickly— 
quickly as his own passion compelled. 
The tense weeks during which the Trust 
of Operators intrenched itself in a po- 
sition of such strength as, before, even 
its own power had never boasted, 
brought the state of affairs in Perania 
rapidly to that day when the first im- 
portations of new men stood at the out- 
168 


Battle 


skirts of the mines, and claimed the 
places of employment to which, in the 
purpose of the Operators, they had been 
assigned. 

Then, indeed— even if until then 
Trevor had remained in ignorance of 
Pattison’s movements— then, in that 
day when long lines of new, raw, re- 
cruits, faced groups of men who through 
years of toil, and difficulty, and effort, 
had striven to make Perania their 
home, the comprehensive and relentless 
character of Pattison’s attack became 
open and revealed. 

Nor in this was Pattison anything 
loath. It suited the attitude of his 
mind, not less than it suited the stage 
to which his procedures had arrived, 
that the battle should now stand forth 
as the overt, determined thing it was. 
That instinct in him of grasping, of 

169 


A Knight of the Toilers 

holding, of driving, that ultra devel- 
opment of his self as a machine of ag- 
grandizement before which all things 
must bend, had got itself well clothed 
as in the garments of a knight battling 
for the common weal. The sense of 
overwhelming danger to the wealth and 
power which he represented, had 
merged itself into a profound belief 
that he was the champion of a funda- 
mental human right. And the inten- 
sity inherent in his fear of injury to 
those fortunes which were his own, 
gave, singularly enough, an air of sin- 
cerity and of fervent zeal, to that devo- 
tion which he professed to be in behalf 
of a cause common to the good of all. 

Pattison talked boldly now— stood 
out in his knightly garb with that bold- 
ness, with which erstwhile, he had 
pressed subterraneously the plans 

170 


Battle 


which looked singly to the triumph of 
his own power. He talked of labor 
leaders who assaulted rights on which 
the stability of the Commercial order 
depended. He talked of possible pros- 
trated cities and ruined industries. He 
talked as one must needs talk who must 
enlist in his battle the interest and sym- 
pathy of a people awakened to a belief 
that his battle was their own. As, in 
the inner Councils, his word was, we 
must smash that Crowd to hell,’’ to the 
outer world he said, Labor must be 
free.” 

But that which Perania became im- 
mediately eager to know was what 
Trevor would do— and could do. 

Only now, indeed, had deep under- 
standing come of the giant strides to 
power which the Organization under 
his guidance had made— understanding 

171 


A Knight of the Toilers 

of the power which now it actually held, 
of its great wealth and its abundant re- 
soui’ces. 

And now also the public first realized 
what allies Trevor had nursed, and 
brought to his organization’s support. 
Capitalization, begun in Perania, had, 
indeed, gripped the heart of labor’s 
forces the country over. It was the 
new direction of progress. Many 
another organization than that of the 
Miners could now boast a financial 
strength of vastly significant propor- 
tions. The allied power of these or- 
ganizations was to be reckoned with in 
something of that sense in which the 
allied power of the great private Cor- 
porations had to be reckoned with. 

Nor did any doubt that these allied 
forces were at Trevor’s command. 

Far and wide as the knowledge of the 

172 


Battle 


contest that impended became general, 
interest centered in this new leader 
whose personality had become so grave- 
ly important. The ears of the country 
were turned to hear how it was proposed 
to employ the power that had been ac- 
quired. 

What shall we do? ’’ Trevor asked. 
<< Why, the men will go out of course. 
A strike will be ordered. The mines 
will be tied up.” 

But beyond this? And it was be- 
yond this that Perania^s quivering in- 
terest lay. How far could the Organi- 
zation ’’s new resources make the efforts 
of Pattison futile— how far make a 
strike effective— the tying up of the 
mines complete ? What new power had 
the Organization acquired through its 
greater wealth? And how would that 
new power be used ? 

173 


A Knight of the Toilers 

Beyond his single statement however, 
Trevor, for the most part was silent— 
and silent in a manner of mystification 
that tended to deepen the fears that pre- 
vailed. From him, indeed, no word 
could be drawn of what the Miners’ Or- 
ganization had done in preparation for 
such a confiict, or would do, now that 
it had come. Neither from him came 
either criticism or denunciation of what 
Pattison had done, or would do. 

With Perania itself trembling in 
alarm, with Pattison vehement in ag- 
gressiveness, Trevor was quiet, self-con- 
tained. Only sometimes his smile dis- 
guised a sneer at Pattison ’s disturbed 
state. Only sometimes the click of his 
jaw, and the firmness of his step, told of 
clear cut ends toward which his own will 
was bent. 

At Miners’ Headquarters, where he 

174 


Battle 


was supreme, the days were days of 
movement ; not discussion, not talk, but 
action. A vast army was responding 
to the control of a leader whose eye, 
through the working out of a thousand 
details, kept steadily to the unfolding of 
a single purpose. Captains, lieuten- 
ants, and soldiers, in the solid army that 
had been built up, were coming and go- 
ing, receiving commands, executing or- 
ders and reporting the achievement of 
results. That which was to be done, was 
to be done. Agitations, indignations 
were in his presence put aside. The 
general was moving forward, simply 
and directly, to a city which it was in 
his power to take. 

Once, indeed, shortly after the strike 
had been declared and the Organiza- 
tion's army had gone out,’’ debate in 
the inner circles had begun. 

175 


A Knight of the Toilers 

The new men, whom Pattison was 
now bringing in to Perania, had suc- 
ceeded but indifferently well either in 
getting to the work that had been as- 
signed to them or in sticking to it. In- 
timidation and violence, it would seem, 
had been their lot. 

And Pendleton, high now in the 
Councils of the new Organization, and 
strong in the sense of the power which 
that Organization commanded, was bold 
in his insistence that the power which 
the Organization held, should be exer- 
cised at every point and to the last de- 
gree. 

“ Labor,” he said, ‘‘ must be forced 
to be solid.” 

Even as Pattison and his Trust of 
Operators for their own reasons would 
drive out one set of workers so Pendle- 
ton, determinedly, and for his own rea- 

176 


Battle 


sons, would have driven out another set. 
Pattison would have labor ‘‘free Pen- 
dleton would have “ labor ” powerful# 

“ Whatsoever is necessary,’’ he went 
on, “ to make the solidarity of labor’s 
forces complete must be done.” 

Trevor, ordinarily impatient of dis- 
cussion, had here smiled indulgently. 

“ Yes,” he said slowly, “ of course.” 

“We must not hesitate,” Pendleton 
continued, “ we must not hesitate to es- 
tablish our power to the utmost.” 

There was more behind the statement, 
as those present knew, than within it. 
There was specifically the forceful in- 
terference with the encroachments of 
new men; there was, perhaps, the de- 
liberate employment of two hundred 
thousand men to drive back the men 
whom Pattison was striving to bring in 
—and that with such methods as might 

12 177 


A Knight of the Toilers 

unfold, and as inherent power made 
possible. And altogether this was a 
phase of things which Trevor— removed 
as it was from the main line of his 
policy— had taken but little into con- 
sideration. 

Pausing now in reflection, he was con- 
scious of the old debate of his business 
years recurring to his thought. The 
old issue, of actions, themselves ques- 
tionable, being justifled, because the end 
proposed was a worthy one, presented 
itself once again to his mind though 
in new form. Great commercial enter- 
prises, kept in motion, were, indeed the 
apology for many corruptions. More 
worthily, an enterprise which so direct- 
ly advanced the welfare of a great body 
of common people, might seem the jus- 
tiflcation of an exercise of determined 
force. 


178 


Battle 

Hesitate? he asked, echoing Pen- 
dleton’s word. 

He realized that ugly possibilities lay 
in the situation as of necessity. Yet,— 
in any great effort there were ugly pos- 
sibilities. 

No,” he said, answering his own 
question. We shall not hesitate.” 

Great ends would justify much, and 
apologize for much. This always had 
been Trevor’s creed. 

Even early in his life— back there 
when he had been Pattison’s lieutenant 
—this had been his creed. By virtue of 
it had he overcome his repugnance to 
the thieveries and rascalities of trade, 
to those sordid things to which now the 
press and the literature of the day bore 
such constant witness. Great indus- 
tries set in motion, a great commerce di- 
rected and managed, imperial cities 

179 


A Knight of the Toilers 

rising in their material splendor— these 
things apologize for much. 

Greater ends must apologize for— 
well, at any rate, for sins— if there 
should be sins— which were less. And 
the end for which now he must not hesi- 
tate to use the strength at his command 
was clear enough. 

Looking backward to the time when 
he first had come into the Peranian re- 
gion, Trevor’s remembrance empha- 
sized but lightly the hardness of condi- 
tions under which the men had lived. 
Such conditions, if need be, could be 
faced. His remembrance did empha- 
size the attitude toward life of the men 
—an attitude which was gloomy because 
their conditions were untouched by the 
hope of change ; bitter, because of indis- 
putable wrongs. And, indeed, gloomier 
still, and bitterer still, because that 
180 


Battle 


which alone was fed to their minds and 
hearts was an heightened sense of their 
wrongs, and the hopeless condition of 
their lot. 

This hardness of conditions in 
Trevor’s mind, this gloom and this bit- 
terness were not merely unhappiness. 
Happiness or unhappiness might be 
waived aside. But it was ineffective- 
ness. It was life atrophied, shackled, 
depressed of its meaning. 

And then a change had come— slowly, 
surely. It was marvelous to see what 
change could come— given conditions. 
To Trevor, during the months in which 
the organization was taking its strides 
to financial strength, it had been curi- 
ous and impressive to watch this 
change— this change in the attitude of 
great masses of men toward life’s 
duties and toward life’s possibilities. 

181 


A Knight of the Toilers 

One saw this change ; one felt it. It 
was in the mines and in the homes. It 
was in the meetings. It was every- 
where. Bitterness and gloom disap- 
peared. Still better, listless ineffective- 
ness went. An appreciation of life’s 
worth came. 

When ambition siezes the sonl, powers 
within, before undreamt of, spring to 
service because now a use is found to 
which to put them. So— essentially— 
here. As the shackles, which had re- 
pressed life, were loosed, a new intelli- 
gence got abroad, and a new vigor. 
Life was unfolding. Men grew. Yes, 
—the manhood of thousands upon thou- 
sands had stepped to a level of being 
and of doing and of enjoying that was 
higher, more effective. 

That was a good end. 

That was an end to compare favora- 
182 


Battle 

bly with any that man ever set himself 
to achieve. 

It might be that the change had come 
through a sense of intimate relation- 
ship, which membership in the organi- 
zation gave the men, with that great 
Thing— which, by the customs of the 
times and the laws of the land, had been 
enthroned with sovereign power. 

Or the change had come, perhaps, 
from the confidence instilled, by the 
knowledge that a great organization, 
solidified by a great amount of money, 
stood to them as strong fortress and as 
defense. 

Or, perhaps, the change had come 
simply because the men knew that this 
great organization gave them assurance 
that the effort of mind and muscle, of 
heart and spirit, which they put forth, 
were now to accrue somewhat to their 


183 


A Knight of the Toilers 

own benefit— that, having labored in the 
sweat of their face, they were to enjoy a 
measure of that which their labor had 
produced. 

At any rate, this altered status of 
things must be conserved. It was time 
that those who sacrified men that money 
might grow, should know that money 
might well be sacrified that men might 
grow. 

The end, at any rate, was an end 
whose conservation and advancement 
would justify much. It was an end, 
moreover, whose beginning and whose 
advancement lay entirely in the 
solidarity of labor’s forces.” 

Pendleton was right. 

Labor,” said Trevor, repeating the 
former’s words and speaking slowly, 
‘‘ must be forced to be solid.” 


184 


Battle 


Yet, in general, in these days Trevor 
moved as one whose purpose neither in- 
volved nor admitted perplexities. To 
the offensive movements of Pattison he 
gave but little thought. 

They have the right to do,’^ he said, 
that which they can do.’’ 

Within the organization the con- 
sciousness was kept vivid that there 
were things also that labor could do; 
that in organized labor, indeed, there 
was power inherent to achieve its ends, 
far exceeding the power that lay in the 
men who would subordinate the labor- 
ing forces to their own ends. 

What remained was simply that that 
power should be exercised. And, for 
the present, all forces were distributed 
and utilized and commanded that the 
purpose that was set should move for- 
ward. 


185 


A Knight of the Toilers 

In his single statement to the public, 
given when that public clamored for 
knowledge and waited in anxiety, 
Trevor was terse. 

‘‘ We shall do,^’ he said, that which 
we are able to do.’’ 

And from the calmness of Trevor’s 
manner one might interpret his state- 
ment as one chose. 


XVII. 


Even to Trever himself, however, it 
was a solemn occasion when the miners 
of Perania laid down their tools. Once 
again these men who dug from the earth 
the wealth on which Perania thrived, 
had left their tasks, had gone to their 
homes. Once again they faced, those 
few who controlled the distribution of 
that wealth, and took to themselves the 
great share of its abundance. Once 
again, in innumerable homes, anxiety 
had entered. Once again a million peo- 
ple awaited the outcome of a hard and 
bitter contest. Whatever the confi- 
dence which Trevor himself felt, what- 
ever the sense of strength in which he 
reposed, he was aware that the time was 
one through which most of the men and 

187 


A Knight of the Toilers 

women of Perania would live in dread 
and fear. 

That Trevor would have liked to 
bring this contest to a quick end was 
true enough. He would have liked to 
adjust the existing differences through 
rational discussion. A morning came 
when he decided to make the effort. 
He went over to that part of the city 
in which the offices of the Trust were 
located, and sought Mr. Pattison. 

We wish,’’ he said, when he was 
seated in the magnate’s office, we 
would like this importation of new men 
to stop.” 

Pattison, whose greeting had been 
curt, turned. 

In fact— it must stop,” Trevor 
added. 

''Why?” 

There was anger in Pattison ’s heart. 

188 


Battle 

There might be, however, an advantage 
in temporizing. 

“ Because,’’ said Trevor, ‘‘it is the 
organization ’s demand. ’ ’ 

“ Your point is,” Pattison returned, 
“ that we, the owners of these mines, 
shall yield to you the power to say who 
is to be employed in them.” 

“ If you wish to put it that way,” 
said Trevor, quietly. 

“You dare,” the magnate’s anger 
grew, “you dare to insist that not I, but 
you, shall say whom we are to employ? ” 

“I dare.” 

“Ah,” Mr. Pattison deliberated, “ ah, 
that I can’t give employment without 
your permission? ” 

“ Exactly.” 

Mr. Pattison relaxed. 

“ By what right? ” he asked, slowly. 

An analysis of the altered relation- 

189 


A Knight of the Toilers 

ships of men, and especially of organi- 
zations of men, to each other, which the 
form of later industrial development 
had brought, was hardly in order ; nor, 
Trevor knew, was that what Pattison 
wanted. He was silent. 

Because you can control a mob,” 
said Pattison, tensely, “ or because you 
think you can, you propose to assault 
my rights— the rights of this corpora- 
tion.” 

Your rights? ” Trevor, smiling, 
waived the idea aside. His accompan- 
ing gesture seemed to recall the days 
when Pattison himself, in his talks to 
the very person who now stood before 
him, was accustomed to attach to 
rights,” but little importance. 

The rights,” Pattison began hotlyi 
of this corporation—” 

man,” said Trevor^ interrupting, 

190 


Battle 

‘‘ who claims rights— ought to have 
clean hands/’ 

What may have been,” said Patti- 
son, may have been. That which con- 
fronts us now is— the present. The 
issue of the present is a simple one. 
What is right now? ” 

Trevor arose. The situation surely 
was a funny one. That Pattison should 
starve out ” two hundred thousand 
workers in the interests of the Trust— 
that was right. But that the Miners’ 
Organization should drive back other 
two hundred thousand (or less) in the 
interests of that organization— that was 
wrong. To conserve the interests of 
consolidated wealth, the war on the 
Union, the destruction of the Organiza- 
tion, was right. But the preservation 
of that Organization on which the wel- 
fare of two hundred thousand men and 


191 


A Knight of the Toilers 

their families depended — that was 
reprehensible. 

For Trevor to tell. Pattison what that 
Organization meant for a million peo- 
ple— that was hopeless. To tell him 
that in organization their only chance 
lay against the otherwise unequal forces 
of lifer; to tell him that organization 
meant opportunity for them, a fair 
chance; to tell him that it meant a re- 
duction of the thorns of life, an intro- 
duction of that which would make their 
lives of value— was to talk to Pattison 
of that which, though he had ears, he 
could not hear. Pattison was too long 
trained to see simply his own dol- 
lar— or at the very best to see 
that which might mark gain to a 
commercial enterprise. Still more 
impossible was it for Trevor to tell 
Pattison that the unfolding and de- 

192 


Battle 


velopment of human lives was an enter- 
prise quite as important as the per- 
fection of commercial machineries. 
The vital spark in Pattison which 
sometime may have connected him with 
the sufferings of other men or with their 
aspirations, was long since dead. Of 
these things, therefore, the labor leader 
did not speak. At this time, indeed, 
he did not think to speak of them. 

There was one thing in which Trevor 
had expected Pattison to have shown 
understanding— understanding on the 
one side as well as on the other. The 
very fact that the capitalistic few had 
arrogated power which, now, was well 
nigh absolute, was the one compelling 
reason why a great labor organization 
was bound to strive to obtain a power 
which would rival— match— that abso- 
lutism. Just because that absolute 

13 


193 


A Knight of the Toilers 

power was in its nature a final bar to the 
improvement and progress of the mass 
of men, so that mass of men was bound 
to do its utmost to break that absolut- 
ism. Only in a solid, compact, aggres- 
sive organization could any hope lie 
for the masses, against the otherwise 
unequal forces which lay in the hands 
of the enemy. 

And there was one point also in which 
Trevor had expected the magnate to 
have dealt simply and directly. If the 
magnate had said now, as erstwhile in 
his history he always had said, that the 
race was to the swiftest, Trevor would 
have respected him. The trouble was, 
that as organized labor began to prove 
its swiftness, Pattison, characteris- 
tically, began to hide in the cant phrases 
of the right— the right which in his own 
purposes he had always disregarded or 
violated. 


194 


Battle 


Trevor crossed to where the magnaxe 
sat, towering over the little man with a 
certain unconscious intimidation that 
caused Pattison to shrink back. 

Pattison,’’ he said, I know you— 
and you know that I know you. And 
you know that I know that there are no 
rights that you have not violated when- 
ever your purpose required it. You 
know that I know that there are no 
rights of man, woman, or child, that you 
haven’t trampled upon whenever, and 
just as quick as, your own advantages 
led you to do so— and you could. Now, 
let us quit talking of rights. The point 
lies elsewhere.” 

As in the old days, when Trevor’s 
quiet intensity expressed itself, Patti- 
son, for a moment, was subdued. Look- 
ing wonderingly at Trevor, he asked 
himself what that was, which had led 

195 


A Knight of the Toilers 

this man from those activities where 
very early wealth had been within his 
reach, and had brought him to the ser- 
vice of this mob of ignorant laborers. 
It even occurred to him to offer now to 
the young man the wealth for which 
persumably all men must be eager— re- 
flecting calculatingly, meanwhile, that a 
snug fortune would be effectively be- 
stowed, if it secured the removal of 
Trevor from the Trust’s path. But, 
while Trevor stood so solidly before 
him, not even in Pattison could this 
thought proceed far. 

The issue between us,” he resinned, 
hesitatingly, the issue between us is a 
simple one— my right to employ whom I 
choose in industries that are my own. 
What are my rights— my rights as the 
laws of the land declare them and the 
government sustains them? That,” he 

196 


Battle 

concluded, ‘‘ is what we are consider- 
ing.’^ 

‘‘No,” said Trevor, bluntly, “it’s 
not.” 

“ It seems to me,” Patfcison replied, 
“ to be the only issue there is.” 

“As it happens,” the labor leader 
said, “ that point is bound up with 
others— with your past, for example, 
with the power which you have been 
permitted (rightly or wrongly) to ac- 
quire— even, if you choose, with the con- 
sent of the laws of the land— and cor- 
ruptly and tyrannically to exercise.” 

“ If the laws of the land— ” the mag- 
nate began. 

“ I know about that, Pattison,” 
Trevor interrupted; “your manipula- 
tions are too subterranean for the laws 
of the land ordinarily to , frustrate. 
Just as also your injustices are too 

197 


A Knight of the Toilers 

well shuffled for us always to nail 
them.” 

That as it may be,” said Pattison. 
u rights, I think—” 

For once we want you to know 
what we think. We have come to a 
time when you must forfeit rights— be- 
cause you have long acted wrongs. 
Your corruptions are too insinuating, 
your greed is too subtle, your lying and 
thieving are too well disguised for 
either government or ourselves to run 
them down. We have to catch you 
where we can. Do you understand? 
IPs this single weapon of ours, Patti- 
son— this regulation of the supply of 
labor against the whole rotten fabric 
through which your power has been 
built up, through which your abuses 
have been possible, and upon which you 
base your alleged rights. Now do you 

198 


Battle 


understand? Well, whether you do or 
don’t we are going to press our point.’’ 

You propose,” Pattison sneered, 

to rule or to ruin.” 

‘‘ Perhaps.” 

‘‘You would exercise your power— 
in violation of law, in defiance of gov- 
ernment? ” 

“We shall exercise our power,” said 
Trevor, “ in the interests of the peo- 
ple.” 

“ In violation of law, in defiance of 
government ? ’ ’ the magnate repeated. 

For a moment Trevor checked the im- 
pulse to speak. 

That the contests of labor had in- 
volved infractions of the law he well 
knew. Yet, too, these infractions of 
law, though lying on the surface, had 
been relatively of inconsiderable signifi- 
cance. This man, sitting before him, 

199 


A Knight of the Toilers 

clothed in the phrases of law and order, 
had manipulated law and corrupted 
government with consequence to the 
body politic compared with which the 
laborer’s faults were as pinpricks to a 
deadly poison. 

A sense of the unfairness, under 
which the weaker and more helpless 
class had fought, made his blood hot. It 
had been like tying the little dog while 
the big one chose his point of vantage 
at will. He controlled himself, how- 
ever. 

“If the law,” he said, “has en- 
couraged trusts to develop which have 
crushed their competitors, it will have 
to tolerate labor organizations which 
shall control labor. 

“ Or,” he continued, “ if govern- 
ment has winked its eye at subversions 
of law which have made it possible for 
200 


Battle 


the trusts to tyrannize, it will have to 
wink its eye at the infractions of law 
which will help unions to strengthen 
their relative positions. If the law and 
the government have yielded to manipu- 
lation for the benefit of a half dozen 
millionaires, they will have to yield to 
adjustment in the interests of two hun- 
dred thousand helpless laborers— and 
their families. 

“And at any rate,” he concluded, 
< < right or wrong, government or no gov- 
ernment, you can’t employ men in these 
mines save as the organization of miners 
permits. What we want to know, is 
whether you will yield the point.” 

“ Yield? ” said Pattison. “Yield? ” 
he demanded. “Yield to you? Yield 
to you and that mob which is back of 
you ? Why we will smash your organi- 
zation to hell. Yield to you? We will 
201 


A Knight of the Toilers 

break you. Allow you to usurp our 
rights ? We shall drive you from house 
and home. Well starve you. 

Why,’^ he went on, growing angrier 
with each word. Do you understand 
what millions I represent? Have you 
any idea of the wealth that this corpora- 
tion controls? What are your paltry 
millions ? Do you know the wealth that 
these mines, these railroads, stand for ? 
The banl^s we control ? The allied cor- 
porations to which we are related ? 
Yield to you? Well drive you out of 
the mines. Well drive you out of 
Perania.’’ 

I understand,’’ said Trevor, rising. 

And departing he passed through the 
door and down into the city. 

Yield to them? ” Pattison repeated 
when he was alone. We’ll starve 
them.” 


202 


Battle 


Walking to the other side of the town, 
however, Trevor was strong in the con- 
sciousness of different things. 

^^At any rate,’’ he reflected, for 
once the battle will stand on the merits 
of a real issue. They can’t starve us. 
They can’t freeze us.” 

That night the preparations for the 
next step in the organization’s plan hav- 
ing been made complete, Trevor, sitting 
quietly in his own room, took paper and 
pen to write to his old friend Arnold. 
Thoughts of Pattison were by now much 
subordinated, and Trevor’s mind ran, 
chiefly, to a discriminating valuation of 
the resources which were in his own 
command. 

‘‘As fear crushes the courage of a 
man,” he wrote to his friend, “ and his 
pride and his wit— so confldence kin- 
203 


A Knight of the Toilers 

dies both his energy and his intelli- 
gence; as under poverty and intimida- 
tion the man shrinks within himself and 
dwindles to the plane of the animal, or 
adjusts himself to the level of machin- 
ery, so with the initial sense of a claim 
and title to the richness of the earth, 
his manhood is reinvigorated, his ambi- 
tion stirs, and he discovers within him- 
self potentialities to which before he 
had been a stranger. As, indeed, 
despair is the great atrophy of life, so 
hope is the great reformer. Perhaps, 
my dear Arnold, all this may sound a 
bit vague to you. Nevertheless it is the 
advantage which this implies, which the 
strongly capitalized, and broadly active, 
organization has brought to the men 
here. 

There are, to be sure, great numbers 
to whom such description does not 

204 


Battle 


apply. But just as it is true, though 
scarcely believed, that in most men the 
good outweighs the bad, so is it true 
with the majority of these miners that 
hope and ambition and zeal replace de- 
pression; intelligent activity supplants 
ignorance ; and the capacity for serving 
their class grows, where before, interest 
has been bounded by the walls of the 
mines, and the gate of the individual 
home, or the door of the saloon. 

The intelligence, the ingenuity, the 
zeal and the loyalty, which are now in- 
creasingly required in the conduct of 
the affairs of the organization, are ever 
increasingly at hand. A new sense has 
been imparted to thousands and thou- 
sands, of a nobler worth of the life of 
their day, of a personal share in the 
greatness which fills their country, and 
a truer dignity in the character of the 

205 


A Knight of the Toilers 

work which each man performs. Such 
an advantage is the advantage which 
this organization, and all similar or- 
ganizations, have always stood most in 
need. 

In the battles which are still to 
come you will note an important dis- 
tinction which this advantage will make 
very marked. The contest of the fu- 
ture will no longer be that of poverty, 
timidly pleading with riches, nor of 
helplessness, hesitatingly begging for 
justice. From now on, with ever in- 
creasing truth, the battle will be one in 
which ambition is matched against am- 
bition; skill and cunning against cun- 
ning and skill; no longer a battle in 
which the oppressed ask humbly for 
their rights denied, while the oppres- 
sors flaunt arrogantly their titles to di- 
vine ownership ; but, rather, one in 
206 


Battle 


which rival forces contend for such 
share of the earth ’s richness as each has 
the strength to grasp ; a battle in which 
capital rivals capital, and in which the 
advantage that one of the contestants' 
may have in trained experience and, 
perhaps, more developed intelligence, 
will be balanced by the advantage the 
other contestant has in numbers of men 
and in power of physical force.” 


207 


XVIII. 


Long before the knowledge had be- 
come general, long, indeed, before the 
story appeared in the Hampton Times, 
Pattison had learned what that step 
was which Trevor was taking as the 
move of his organization, in the contest 
that had been forced by the operators. 

For a moment, when Evans, who had 
discovered the facts, had told his story, 
the magnate had stopped in bewilder- 
ment. 

The scoundrels,’’ he said. 

Then dread crept over him. An un- 
easy sense of a certain fitness in the 
great power which the forces of labor 
were so steadily acquiring, was, in these 
latter days, continually present to his 
consciousness. It was almost impossible 
for Pattison to shake it off. 

208 


Battle 


And now this story— this story that 
held him for a moment quite still— this 
story seemed to fit in so well with the 
idea of the ever-extending and ever-in- 
creasing power of that organization 
which he had set out to destroy. 

But then he relaxed. 

‘‘Absurd/’ he said. “ Stuff.” 

He laughed— or tried to; though the 
laughter seemed a little hollow even to 
his own ears. 

“Absurd,” he said again. 

The story which Evans had told, con- 
cerned the ownership by the Miners’ 
Organization of vast acreages of Pe- 
ranian lands ; of farm lands, located at 
various points in the mining valleys, 
and running along, more or less, from 
one end of the region to the other. 

“ A hundred thousand acres of 
farms? ” said Pattison. “ Stuff. Stuff. 

14 


209 


A Knight of the Toilers 

It ’s rubbish. What could they do with 
it? ’’ 

Evans persisting, however, in his re- 
port, described the important, strategi- 
cal part, in the strike that had been de- 
clared, which these lands were intended 
to play. 

They have got the lands, he said, 

and they are going to use them.’^ 

No,’’ said Pattison, stoutly. 

If this were true,” he continued, 
‘‘I’d have known of it, and I’d have 
blocked the damned thing. I’d have 
blocked the infamous game— whatever 
it is.” 

And yet, too, the difficulty of “ block- 
ing ” the plans of the labor organiza- 
tion was growing vastly, intensely 
harder. Of that he was conscious 
enough. 

“ Farm lands? A hundred thou- 
210 


Battle 


sand acres of farm lands! What could 
they do with them^ ’’ 

Pattison’s thoughts came now in 
jerks. Even that side-tracking of the 
Organization’s store supplies, which the 
magnate’s control of the railroads per- 
mitted, seemed now to have lost much 
of its point. 

In any case, however, this was a mat- 
ter that must be investigated completely 
—understood thoroughly. He started 
forth a half dozen other men to get for 
him with exactness all the facts con- 
cerning this first step with which 
Trevor had marked the great battle. 

The capitalized labor organization, it 
must be understood, had come into the 
field of large enterprises too late to ac- 
quire easy control of many of the rights 
and privileges, the franchises and char- 
ters, which had given private corpora- 
211 


A Knight of the Toilers 

tions their singular advantages, their 
quickly gained and enormous wealth, 
and their tremendous power. And yet, 
though with no such singular favor as 
such advantages as these implied, there 
were, perhaps, still some small oppor- 
tunities which remained. 

Land values, at any rate, in the dis- 
tricts lying a little outside of the mining 
valleys, for a long time had been low. 
Due partly, perhaps, to the social ten- 
dencies of the times, due still more to 
arbitrary conditions affecting the 
profits of farming, vast acreages of 
farm lands in Perania, had so far de- 
preciated in value, that it was almost 
literally true that a farm could be 
had for a song. Nor was it a fact of 
small significance that the farmers who 
had tried with meagre facilities, with 

insufficient helpers, and against various 
212 


Battle 


disadvantages, to make a living out of 
these farms, were themselves ready to 
welcome any change that would miti- 
gate their own conditions, either eco- 
nomically or socially. 

The opportunity that lay here had 
dawned in the minds of the leaders hut 
slowly, gradually. One needed to know 
the facts well in order to understand 
how great the opportunity was. Never- 
theless, though at first but a passing 
thought, it soon became a speculative 
idea— a tangible possibility. And then, 
as the Organization’s capital increased, 
as that capital naturally sought chan- 
nels of investment, still more, as the 
likeliness of a great crisis in industrial 
affairs had deepened, the advantage of 
owning a liberal quantity of these lands 
was sharply considered. The day came 
when that advantage was fully recog- 
nized. 


213 


A Knight of the Toilers 

Always with the miners, even when 
work was at its best, there were ever 
recurring idle days. And not infre- 
quently, as things had gone there were 
long periods when these men were with- 
out work at all. That this fact would 
fit in with the possession by the organi- 
zation, of these farm lands— fit in with 
peculiar and exceptional nicety— was 
not hard to see. The farms offered a re- 
lief and a profit for the miner’s other- 
wise idle days, while the miner’s idle 
days made a situation that simplified the 
conduct of the farms. 

The further place that these farms 
might occupy in the unfolding plans of 
the organization, their value when the 
miners should be cut off entirely from 
their usual employment, the refuge they 
would afford from actual hunger— this 
was a value by comparison with which 

214 


Battle 


the amount to be invested in them 
seemed small indeed. The utilization 
of half abandoned farms, .loomed for a 
time, as a possibly detennining factor 
in the great battles which labor had still 
to fight. 

And, in any case, the possibility of 
working these farm lands on the gener- 
ous scale of a great business enterprise, 
was itself an idea of infinite attractive- 
ness. It was an .idea that fitted in well 
with the growing plans of the organiza- 
tion. The farms would stand as the 
complement of the system of stores— 
as another arm in the unfolding plans 
through which Labor must come into 
its own. However Utopian in its 
first aspect, the idea was practical. 
What was more— it was vital. Labor 
here had an opportunity which it must 
not overlook. 


215 


A Knight of the Toilers 

As conviction of the practicality of 
the plan ripened, experiments were 
made— experiments which served also 
to confirm the theory, that in their 
productive value, Peranian farms had 
never been put to a tithe of a test. 
There were possibilities of produc- 
tion here, before undreamt of. There 
was increase upon investment. There 
was return from effort. That which 
lay here promised soon to put the 
laborer on that plane where stood the 
owners of great commercial enterprises. 
Investment in farms was decided to be 
wise. Farms were purchased. The 
land-holdings of the Miners’ Organiza- 
tion grew larger, and larger, and larger. 

That these farms were now supplied 
with the best machinery that modern 
invention has made available, came as a 
natural sequence. That expert mana- 
216 


Battle 


gers were sought out and employed, was, 
of course, in line with the broad methods 
that were adopted. Farming now was 
no longer to be by the solitary toiler, 
dragging out his lonely days’ in inef- 
fective labor, but by squads, companies, 
brigades; work that had long dragged 
out in listless ignorance was to be done 
quickly, seasonably, and with great re- 
sults. The characteristics’ that had long 
marked the handling of great enter- 
prises, in hundreds of other directions, 
were now to be applied in this enter- 
prise, shaped for the benefit and the re- 
lief of labor’s own immediate problems’. 
The produce, the crops, the poultry, 
that these farms should produce, were 
to represent large items in the organiza- 
tion’s prosperity, while the farms 
themselves were to stand, always, as a 
refuge, a protection, and an ever avail- 


A Knight of the Toilers 

able foothold in life, for the members of 
the organization. 

And now, at the juncture to which af- 
fairs had come, in the relation of the 
miners to the operators, it was the for- 
tune of the miners that the contest had 
fallen to the Spring of the year. The 
existence of these farms was Trevor’s 
reply to Pattison’s threat. 

We’ll starve you out,” the mag- 
nate had said. 

You cannot starve us,” said Trevor. 

Something of these facts, with such 
modification or elaboration of them as 
they chose, the men whom Pattison sent 
forth to investigate now brought back 
in the reports which they made to their 
chief. 

As Pattison listened to the reports, 
and as he refiected upon that which they 
218 


Battle 


implied, an insight into his own in- 
herent dependence flashed to his brain. 

“Ah,’’ he said. 

Of the practicality of the plan as a 
whole, of the likelihood that it would be 
successful, of the mishaps or defeats 
that might attend its management, and 
bring it to its end— of all this, Pattison 
pondered and judged as best he might. 
Had another than Trevor been the 
author and director of the movement, 
it is more than likely that Pattison 
would have dismissed serious thought 
of it at once. The fact that it was an 
enterprise of Trevor’s, led him to sink 
gradually into its deepest significance. 

He looked about a little helplessly. 
What was the weapon with which to 
parry this thrust? Even as he in- 
wardly raged, his quick mind saw how 
artificial that basis was, on which the 

219 


A Knight of the Toilers 

power rested, which he had long been 
prone to think his own. 

^‘It is they who can be independent,’’ 
he said, “ if they but know.” 

He realized that Trevor’s move was a 
pertinent one. 

It will be a long time,” he con- 
cluded, before we can drive out that 
crowd.” 

220 


XIX. 


WHATy altogether, had Trevor’s move 
enabled the Organization to effect ? 
After the publication in the press of the 
main facts concerning the steps that had 
been taken, this was the question that 
was widely discussed. 

There were, indeed, at first, many 
doubts expressed of the wisdom of the 
plan and of its practicality. But, 
against the latter, the facts of what 
actually was being done stood out so 
strongly that there was little to be said. 
In the move as such there was in truth 
nothing that was intrinsically strange 
or novel. Always there had been those 
among the miners who, in times of idle- 
ness, had mitigated the terrors of an in- 
dustrial conflict, by profitable devotion 
221 


A Knight of the Toilers 

to their own gardens or larger plots. 
Not infrequently had some miner leased 
a small farm and made the period of a 
long strike quite as renumerative as his 
employment in the mines would have 
been. Nor had such change in form of 
activity proved less agreeable to his 
health than to his pocket. Viewed 
placidly, Trevor’s present move was 
scarcely more than the extension of this 
practice, and the application of it, to the 
entire membership of fhe Organization, 
—scarcely more than this, at any rate, 
save as the broad plans, the large 
methods, and the systematic direction 
of the enterprise, permitted it to be 
more productive— vastly more profit- 
able— vastly more significant. The 
funds of the Organization had per- 
mitted all of its members to be pro- 
vided for. Its leadership was able to 
222 


Battle 


utilize the energies of its membership, 
and from them reap large benefits. 

The significance of the move lay in 
the fact that the great army of workers, 
who had met Pattison’s aggrehesive at- 
tack by withdrawal from the mines, 
were now able to exist— and, perchance, 
for an indefinite time— without that 
dread of impoverishment, of starvation, 
of humiliation and ruin through which 
the wealthy powers of the Trust had 
heretofore brought^ the efforts made for 
the advantage of the men, either to ab- 
solute defeat or to such compromise as 
scarce ever compensated for the vast 
costs which the strike,^’ the battle had 
entailed. 

Where before it had seemed apparent 
that the Operators could exist indefi- 
nitely, while in but a short time the 
workers would be compelled to work— 

223 


A Knight of the Toilers 

or starve; so now it seemed apparent 
that the workers could exist indefinitely 
without serious loss, while each week of 
idleness in the mines would dig deeply 
into the wealth of the Operators and 
bring them at no laggard pace to the 
banks of ruin. Trevor’s strategical 
step, indeed, associated as it was with 
the great capital of the Organization 
and its system of stores, had brought 
the army of workers for the first time 
to a place where it might negotiate the 
sale of its labor on a basis of indepen- 
dence and freedom; an independence 
and freedom such as heretofore had 
been presumed for, and assumed by, 
the enemy alone. Nor could the fact 
be ignored that the Organization’s 
strength did much to make the depen- 
dence of the Operators on the labor 
which the Organization offered them, 

224 


Battle 


complete. Recurring items in the 
newspapers soon became full of sig- 
nificance : 

Eight hundred miners the 
Barton Echo reported, “ are now at 
work on the Organization’s farm 
near Mendani.” 

Six hundred miners,” the 
Hampton Times reported, “ left 
early yesterday for the Organiza- 
tion’s farm near Ellerton.” 

‘‘ Five hundred men are now em- 
ployed on the farms of the Miners’ 
Organization just out of this city,” 
said the Everdale Record, 

And such items of news became ex- 
ceedingly common. Crude as yet as 
the arrangements’ for the care of the 
workers were, the work which the 

15 225 


A Knight of the Toilers 

leaders of the Organization had planned 
was going forward precisely as had 
been intended that it should. 

When the magnates assembled to dis- 
cuss the matter, Pattison’s voice was 
slow and sombre. 

' ‘‘Altogether, as I figure it out,’’ he 
said, “ half of that army of miners ad- 
vantageously at work on their own 
farms/^ 

“ While the other half,” Barnes 
coldly replied, “ remain near the mines 
to keep there such jealous eye on the 
places of their usual employment, as, in 
their judgment, occasion and circum- 
stance require. Yes, I see.” 

“It is a critical time,” said Patti- 
son, solemnly. 

“But,” said Hemphill, “we must 
not tolerate it.” 


226 


Battle 


Just what,’^ Barnes asked with 
marked cynicism, just what precisely 
are you going to do about it? Bring- 
ing in these new men has not been en- 
tirely the success Pattison thought it 
would be/’ 

Which was true. The facility with 
which Pattison ’s importations dis- 
covered excuses for abandoning the 
work to which the magnate had brought 
them was surprising enough. And it 
was commonly said that the best among 
these men were not only provided with 
employment on those mysteriously ex- 
panding farms of Trevor’s, but were 
also assured of protection by the Organ- 
ization itself. A league with the new 
men was more easily established by the 
Organization, than by the Organiza- 
tion’s powerful enemy. 

‘‘ Let us understand,” Barnes con- 
227 


A Knight of the Toilers 

tinned, now speaking directly to Patti- 
son, a full half of their men profitably 
at work on their own farms. 

Yes,^’ Pattison fairly shouted. 
‘‘And they are able to stay there— stay 
there indefinitely— work for them— 
food for them. You see? The other 
half staked off here— along the valleys 
—picketing our mines and fighting our 
new men.” 

“An ingenious plan,” Barnes said, 
calmly enough. “ Half the army pro- 
ducing supplies against hunger and 
want.” 

“And the other half,” said Pattison, 
“ here to establish their claim on the 
collieries.” 

“ Half of their army,” Barnes in- 
quired, “ laboring to the distinct profit 
of the Organization? ” 

“And the other half,” Pattison con- 
223 


Battle 


eluded, kept here to do violence— to 
intimidate— to obstruct, to gather in 
mobs.’’ 

And the situation thus stated was 
scarcely overstated. In fact this pre- 
cisely was the condition that had now 
developed in the mines of Perania. 
The Organization that had been able to 
provide for its members against want, 
had been also able to so distribute the 
forces as to make encroachment of new 
workers upon the field of its members’ 
emplo3nnent practically impossible. 
Had the strength of the Organization 
been less, the activity of that division of 
the army which watched the mines 
might indeed have produced dire situa- 
tions and consequences ; situations from 
which Pattison might readily have 
claimed, and perhaps readily secured, 
the intervention in his behalf of all the 

229 


A Knight of the Toilers 

powers of the State and perhaps, of the 
Nation. The determined attitude of 
the Organization, if matched against a 
contending force of similar propor- 
tions, might easily have produced a state 
of disorder and of violence, of blood- 
shed, of war. 

It was due, however, to the great pres- 
tige that the Organization now enjoyed, 
that its pickets and soldiers had scarcely 
even to face an opposition. Their 
presence was sufficient. The incoming 
men— disunited, disrelated to each other 
—had at best none of that courage 
which alone would have served Patti- 
son’s purpose. Pacing Trevor’s forces, 
and coming to a realization of the out- 
standing power of Trevor’s Organiza- 
tion, they quickly lost such courage as 
individually they might have had. Not 
even Pattison himself could find in the 


230 


Battle 


situation that existed a substantial 
ground for a call upon the State’s 
militia, nor derive a real advantage, 
should the State itself yield to his ex- 
pression of such a wish. 

On every side, therefore, it now be- 
gan to appear that, after years of 
laborious effort, tl^e association of 
miners had obtained a position of mas- 
terliness in relation to the mines of Pe- 
rania, and in relation to the men who 
had for so long enjoyed the great bulk 
of the wealth which those mines had 
yielded. 

What are we to do? ” Pattison de- 
manded. 

‘‘ You,” Barnes pointedly replied, 
‘‘You are managing this, Pattison.” 

“ But you— what do you suggest? ” 

“ This.” And Barnes now squared 
himself to his auditors, as one who, after 

231 


A Knight of the Toilers 

long thought, had come— reluctantly, 
perhaps, but firmly— to a conclusive 
judgment. 

This,^’ he said, make the quickest 
truce you can.” 

Pattison turned impatiently. 

‘‘ Hemphill,” he said, addressing the 
other member of the conference, we 
must dig deep into this— and fight.” 

Hemphill hesitated. Like Pattison 
his instinct was to fight the men to the 
last ditch— provided he saw clearly his 
own way^ out. But, unlike Pattison, he 
shared with Barnes the capacity to 
recognize a desperateness in the present 
position, which would be rather ag- 
gravated than relieved through a long 
contest. 

This Trevor ” he said, is an im- 
commonly shrewd man.” And then he 
added, a little irrelevantly. What is 
he getting out of it? ” 

232 


Battle 

He^s a damned fool/’ said Patti- 

son. 

Whatever he is,” Barnes said, 
slowly and distinctly, whatever he is, 
he has you cornered— cornered effec- 
tively. The quicker you realize that, the 
better. The situation,” he added, is 
new. He ’s got you surrounded on 
every side, and he’s pressing you in 
from every quarter. He’s got you 
fairly stalled.” 

We must fight,” said Pattison. 

Your first plan,” said Barnes, 
your first plan was to starve these 
fellows— starve them into submission.” 
Pattison lowered his eyes. 

‘^As a matter of fact,” the other con- 
tinued, that hope was your only sub- 
stantial one. Well— that plan is killed 
—killed. Your second chance was to 
get other men. Are you getting them ?” 

233 


A Knight of the Toilers 

‘‘ Some/’ said Pattison. Then in a 
lower tone, and half to himself, they 
are not even decent, stalking horses. 
Some,” he repeated. 

Pattison,” said Barnes. His 
words were well weighed. ‘‘ Pattison, 
we are at the dawn of a new day. You 
may not see it. We are. And, though 
you can’t see it now, you will. We are 
at the dawn of a new day— at the be- 
ginning of an order of things which is 
strange.” 

The further thoughts which lay in his 
mind but which he did not utter, and 
would not, were various. In explicit 
terms it is likely enough that he would 
have failed to give adequate expression 
to them even if he had tried. On the 
one side, however, there was in his con- 
sciousness, clear recognition of the im- 
patience, growing ever more extensive 

234 


Battle 


and ever more grave, with which the 
people as a whole were now viewing the 
great Corporations of the country— im- 
patience with the undue proportions of 
wealth which they had been permitted 
to grasp— impatience with the uses to 
which that wealth had been put, with 
its corruption and its debasements, and 
impatience, above all, with the gigantic 
power which its unjustly acquired 
wealth had permitted it to arrogate. 

And, on the other side, there was in 
his consciousness a dawning recognition 
of the title of the workers of the world 
to share more fairly in the wealth which 
the country boasted— a title which cor- 
porate aggrandizement had done all in 
its power to defeat. Perhaps, too— for 
the man in his way was something of a 
philosopher— he discerned that trend 
in the unfolding thought of modern life, 

235 


A Knight of the Toilers 

in which the improvement of the condi- 
tion of the downmost man was becom- 
ing, more and more, the one defensible 
object which all the resources of a de- 
mocracy must be brought to serve, that 
trend also through which the enlight- 
ened determination of the people was 
brought to bear on all policies, so 
that this object might be brought to 
pass. (Nor could Barnes fail to recog- 
nize, in Trevor’s present work, a singu- 
larly practical effort to help a great 
body of the common people to help 
themselves.) 

And with these general principles ly- 
ing more or less in a half formed state 
in his consciousness, it was not difficult 
for him to perceive new and grave diffi- 
culties growing up, if Pattison resorted 
too boldly, even to means which in 
earlier times had been effective enough, 

236 


Battle 


in the contests of great Corporations 
with their employed workers. The 
forces of the State, he believed, were no 
longer so readily at the command of a 
powerful few. Rather they would be 
more likely to answer the call of the 
growing many. 

For a moment no reply was made to 
what Barnes had said. Then the latter 
spoke more quickly and sharply. 

“ If you can fight,” he said, fight. 
But my word is this : take such terms as 
they will give you— and take them 
quick. We’ll save something that 
way.” 

He rose from his chair. 

But,” Mr. Hemphill now had found 
his voice, they can’t work in the mines 
and on their farms. They can’t run 
their own business and run ours. We 
must that.” 


237 


A Knight of the Toilers 

<< Fight? ’’ Once more instinct leaped 
to its dominant place. We will 
fight,’’ Pattison said, hotly. We’ll 
lick them. There’s law in this country, 
isn’t there? There’s government, isn’t 
there? There are courts, aren’t there? 
There’s an army, isn’t there? Well— 
what are they for? ” 

Fight, then,” said Barnes, coldly, 
as he moved to the door. ‘‘ But— take 
a deeper look first into what it is, and 
who it is, that you are fighting.” 

As the door closed on the outgoing 
men, thought did struggle with hot 
anger, in Pattison ’s mind. 

Besides that army of men which 
Trevor had so strategically handled, 
there was, of course, the Organization 
itself. It towered high as Pattison 
squarely faced it. It was strong and 
solid. Its resources were great. 

238 


Battle 


For a time, for an indefinite time, the 
workers could amply sustain them- 
selves. Still more, the growth of 
labor’s power, the independence of po- 
sition to which it had attained, the dig- 
nity of its related strength, almost com- 
pletely removed from the realm of cal- 
culation the independent worker. The 
men who were now available were 
worthless. 

He was concerned. The defeat of 
his enemy through impoverishment, 
through starvation, which, in his mind, 
had been the key to his triumph— this 
was frustrated. Defeat of it through 
importation of other men, this was but a 
step removed from dismal failure. The 
eager demand that government should 
help him, should intervene in his behalf, 
was palsied by a vision of the new 
power which could dispute with him 

239 


A Knight of the Toilers 

the claim for government’s arm and 
strength. The grasp for his rights 
seem.ed to halt in his throat, while some 
echo of words that Trevor had used, 
told of others’ rights, with which his 
had now to reckon. 

He still, indeed, had millions to put 
into the contest. And back of these 
were larger millions in friendly al- 
legiance. But each week, each day, 
would now imply great, deep inroads 
upon them, while the strength of his 
enemy would abate nothing He had 
millions of money to put into the con- 
test, but how were they to prevail if he 
could neither starve these workers into 
submission nor induct others into their 
place? Would not these millions 
shrink and shrivel and dwindle away? 

The old sense of fear, the presenti- 
ment of an unnamed dread which had 

240 


Battle 


been present in his mind from the very 
first of the contest, gripped him now 
with a new and terrifying force. 

Nevertheless, Pattison ’s instincts 
were eternal. 

Fight them he said. Of course 
we’ll fight them— and lick them.” 


XX. 


Shortly after the conference of the 
magnates, Trevor, and others high in 
the Councils of the Miner’s Organiza- 
tion, were summoned to appear in the 
Courts’ of Dorlon County as defendants 
in a suit at law. Pattison, and certain 
of his associates in the great Trust of 
operators, were the plaintiffs. 

The suit claimed money damages-— 
money damages in an amount that was 
calculated to stagger the imagination. 
It alleged, as the basis of the claim, 
that the defendants were guilty of in- 
timidating the plaintiff’s employees, in- 
terfering with them in the peaceful pur- 
suit of their labors, and menacing their 
safety. It alleged, also, that the de- 
fendants were guilty of enticing the 
plaintiff’s employees away. It alleged 

242 


Battle 


further that the defendants were guilty 
in a general way of malicious interfer- 
ence with the conduct of the plaintiff’s 
business. It was the courts of law that 
Pattison had now chosen as the field 
for his next battle. This summons was 
his first gun in the second phase of the 
war upon that organization which he 
had set out to destroy. 

When the summons came, Trevor 
glanced at it briefiy. Then he resumed 
the work on which he was engaged. 

But in another room, in that Miners’ 
Head-quarters, this announcement of 
the new form which Pattison ’s aggres- 
siveness had taken was not accepted so 
readily. To Pendleton, to Protheroe, 
and to others who were with these two, 
the step taken recalled harsh scenes 
from which such men as Pattison had 
emerged with oppressive triumphs; re- 
243 


A Knight of the Toilers 

called, indeed, the power which men of 
great wealth had been able to exercise, 
subtly and with supreme effectiveness, 
in these very channels where now it 
was proposed to pitch the battle again ; 
recalled also the disasters to the cause 
which Pendleton and Protheroe had 
led, in which this exercise of power had 
resulted— disasters to the cause, dis- 
couragement to the great body of peo- 
ple who, under their leadership, had 
sacrificed so much in their hope of bet- 
terment, and disfavor of both cause and 
men in those sympathies of the public 
at large, which had been so necessary 
and so much hoped for. And now Pen- 
dleton, aroused as only a Pendleton 
could be aroused, righteously indignant 
as only Pendleton could be indignant, 
and impetuous, as always— Pendleton 
rushed to that room in which sat the 
chief. 


244 


Battle 


*^‘Law courts?” lie demanded. ‘^They 
have debauched the courts about as long 
as they may. Trevor, we are strong 
now. They have dictated legislation. 
They have directed courts. They have 
controlled authorities— in their inter- 
ests. Now it’s our turn.” 

Trevor smiled. 

‘‘ Sit down,” he said. 

Turning in his chair, he brought out 
certain documents, carefully collated 
and classified, which he pushed towards 
Pendleton, and commended to the lat- 
ter’s study. 

We’ll have a suit of our own,” he 
said. 

Pendleton spent some time in the 
study of the documents which had been 
put before him. 

Then Trevor turned again. He aban- 
doned the work upon which he had been 

245 


A Knight of the Toilers 

engaged, and set to work with Pendleton 
to properly arrange the memoranda for 
a ‘series of suits at law against the trust 
of operators— each of the suits claiming 
large sums in damages, and each of 
them alleging various invasions by the 
defendants upon the rights and privi- 
leges of the plaintiffs. And Arnold, 
counsellor-at-law and Trevor’s friend, 
called from New York by Trevor’s tele- 
gram of the day before, now joined the 
two leaders in giving that form to their 
suits which was necessary for their pre- 
sentation in the courts. 

That’s a game,” Trevor said, ‘‘ at 
which two can play.” 

Nor did the chief of the miners seem 
disturbed from his usual calm by this 
new addition to his cares. 

Once before— many times before, to 

246 


Battle 


be sure, but once before with peculiar 
and spectacular effect— had the battles 
of rich and powerful contestants been 
pitched in the courts of law of that 
great country of which Perania is a 
part. That older story, in which is in- 
cluded the prostration of the courts at 
the feet of forces more influential than 
the courts themselves, the nulliflcation 
of the court’s authority, the futility of 
the moves and counter-moves of the 
contestants themselves, and the final re- 
duction of the battle to a contest quite 
removed from all reference to courts or 
to law— that story, in truth, is one of 
the dark blots in the unfolding of the 
country’s history. 

Once again such a story began to be 
enacted. That long siege of the courts 
which Pattison conducted— that mani- 
festly abler counter-siege of Trevor ^s; 

247 


A Knight of the Toilers 

that long story of suits and counter- 
suits, of injunctions and counter-in- 
junctions, of court orders, and counter- 
court orders— that long story in which, 
at last, whatever of merit, or of law, or 
of justice, may have originally inhered 
in the claims, was entirely obscured ; in 
which naught remained possible but a 
summing up according to the sympathy 
which one or the other of the parties 
had won— of that long story, are not 
the details complete in the records of 
the courts of the various counties of 
which Perania is composed? 

One feature distinguished this latter 
story from its prototype. In the older 
tale, the contest centered on either side 
in a few men who were battling solely 
for their own fortunes. The courts of 
an imperial state were prostrated in hu- 
miliation and disgrace that a few men 

248 


Battle 


might conduct their nefarious contest 
for wealth, which, under the most favor- 
ing judgment, could be regarded only as 
plunder. 

There was in the present contest the 
knowledge that one of the contestants 
represented even numerically a great 
portion of the commonwealth; repre- 
sented, characteristically, the majority 
of that commonwealth; represented, 
fundamentally, the very basis on which 
that commonwealth had been reared 
and upon which alone it could stand. 
Such advantage as this contestant 
might gain, would on the whole, repre- 
sent a recovery to the common body of 
the people of a power which had long 
been lost to the forces of those few who 
were plunderously powerful. 

And the knowledge that this was’ so, 
soon ripening as it did into firm belief, 

249 


A Knight of the Toilers 

into strong conviction, gained wide, and 
ever wider, ascendancy, over the public 
mind. Even many of those men 
who were the mouthpieces of general 
opinion, clergymen, lawyers, editors— 
who had undertaken earlier to bitterly 
denounce the aggressiveness of the or- 
ganized forces of labor, men who re- 
garded the forward movement of these 
organized forces as disturbing, anarchi- 
cal, men who had believed— or talked as 
if they believed— that encroachments 
upon the privileges of the existing com- 
mercial power could mean only disaster 
to the general welfare— even many of 
these soon began to recognize that the 
battle of that vast mass of men who con- 
stituted the very foundation on which 
Perania existed, was in truth the battle 
of the people as a whole ; to acknowledge 
also that in their prosperity lay the 

250 


Battle 


prosperity of all Perania, even as in 
their adversity, Perania must lie in 
bondage. 

As the months advanced, indeed, the 
belief deepened that this organization 
of labor’s forces represented essentially 
the cause of the people ; that out of the 
body of the people, this force alone was 
so organized that it could o:ffer effective 
resistance to the arrogated powers that 
lay in the hands of a few men. Even 
the money capital itself, which the or- 
ganization now boasted, was an augury 
of general good. For if, on the one 
side, the capital that had been massed, 
stood as a weapon to the laboring men 
in their battles with the harsh condi- 
tions of life, it stood no less, on the other 
side, as a salutary interruption to that 
steady progress of capital into the 
hands of a selfish, unscrupulous, and 

251 


A Knight of the Toilers 

often tyrannical few. It stood, indeed, 
as the one available weapon through 
which the accumulations of the men 
who had their hands on the country’s 
wealth were to be checked— the weapon 
through which the aggrandizement of 
capital power and the destructive use of 
that power was to be first arrested, then 
challenged, and at lajt broken. That 
old competition of business man and 
business man, whose removal and de- 
struction had made the giant corpora- 
tions possible— something of that old 
competition seemed here to reappear in 
new form, and with restoration of ad- 
vantage to the general good. 

And, indeed, as great combinations of 
wealth had permitted the hands of the 
few to become stronger than all other 
forces in the land whatsoever, so rival 
combinations in the interest of the 


252 


Battle 


many, were to loose the fingers of the 
selfish and facilitate the passing of 
power into the hands of that multitude 
where it belonged. If, on the one side, 
the resolute capitalization of their 
earnings was to stand for the relief of 
harsh conditions surrounding the toil of 
many men ; on the other, it was to imply 
a reduction of the nation’s gravest 
dangers. If, on the one side, it was to 
be the acquisition for laboring men of 
the agency through which their scant 
earnings would do twice the service they 
had done before; on the other side, it 
was to put shackles on enemies of the 
Eepublic. If, on the one side, it was 
the erection of a bulwark of defense ; on 
the other, it would represent an assault 
on the fortress of despoiling brigands. 
On the one side, it was the introduction 
of life and liberty and light; on the 


A Knight of the Toilers 

other, it would be the restraint of cor- 
ruption, of fraud, of oppressions, and 
of tyrannies. 

It followed naturally enough, as the 
sympathy which this sense of things 
created, became more marked, that in 
the Battle of the Courts, Trevor’s 
cause gained rapidly over Pattison. 
Nor, of course, was it a small matter, 
confronting the politics of Perania, that 
the votes representing the organization, 
and affiliated with it, stood now as a 
solid body, while the people as a whole 
were alive and aroused to these affairs 
that were in progress. The magnate of 
the Trust ere long realized that in this 
field also he had met defeat. 

That change of attack which now fol- 
lowed, in which Pattison made his claim 
for the protection of the militia of the 

. 254 


Battle 


State, and, singularly enough, was able 
to secure it, had not been even at the 
outset a promising line of strategy. 
That, indeed, was the reason why Patti- 
son had first chosen the courts of law as 
the scene of his efforts. 

The militia, nevertheless, had come— 
had camped about the collieries near 
Hampton, near Barton, near Everdale 
—had found some reasons, it seemed, 
for the use of arms, the exertion of 
force. Some outbreaks of lawlessness 
had certainly occurred. Prominent 
men had been burned in effigy. Humble 
men, it was said, had been warned of 
vengeance to come through notices 
whose signatures were in blood and 
whose seal was the sign of the skull. A 
mass of men had assembled to intimi- 
date, now an individual, now a ^roup. 
A high official of the mines had been 

255 


A Knight of the Toilers 

humiliated. An officer of the law had 
been attacked. Once a man was drag- 
ged to a tree and strung by the neck. A 
building was dynamited. A train was 
wrecked. 

Nevertheless, that which rendered the 
introduction of the militia a futile move 
was the morale of the Organization as 
it now existed. That division of 
Trevor’s army which, in long lines of 
resolute men, dotted the outskirts of 
the mines, was well under the command 
of its leaders, and was never betrayed 
into that which was recognizable vio- 
lence or overt intimidation. The word 
of the Organization was now sufficient 
for the purposes which it harbored. 
And, though Pattison persisted in his 
efforts to man the mines with new men, 
yet the newcomers were not long in 
yielding to the moral pressure of those 

256 


Battle 

who were of right and of nature their 
brethren. 

As the long summer advanced the 
striking features of the conditions pre- 
vailing in Perania grew out of the 
operation of the farms. The farms 
themselves had begun to present the 
aspect of new communities— in which 
independence and prosperity were 
marked. Back and forth also between 
the various farms to which they were 
assigned, and the towns in which they 
were accustomed to dwell, bands of 
workers were constantly coming and 
going. And in these men there was the 
evidence of such individual well-being, 
of such strength and self-reliance, as 
would have justified revolutions of 
greater cost than had been this one— 
this one which had been effected simply, 
naturally, with neither violence, nor 

17 257 


A Knight of the Toilers 

disturbance, nor great sacrifices. Those 
features which had made picturesque 
the conditions of earlier contests no 
longer prevailed. The gaunt and tat- 
tered figures were no more. The suf- 
ferers, pleading for a portion of ra- 
tions, were no more. The present con- 
test was a contest of equals. 

As autumn came in, however, a con- 
dition arose which for a time brought 
new consternation to Pattison and not a 
little concern to Trevor as well. 

Far and wide, interest in the great 
contest had deepened. The eyes of an 
entire country in truth became fastened 
upon Perania. And in regions distant 
from Perania itself, the conviction had 
gained ground that a third factor ex- 
isted in the situation, with strong 
claims that might wisely be urged, with 

258 


Battle 


rights which could no longer be ignored. 
This third factor was the great public — 
the great public of the nation— and that 
great public was preparing to make 
itself felt. 

With the rumbling of voices, with the 
intensifying of interest, that which im- 
pended, was the intervention of the 
great power of the National Govern- 
ment. And in that intervention there 
lay the possibility that the Government 
itself might assume possession and con- 
trol of the properties around which the 
battle had waged so long. 

In both camps this danger was seri- 
ously debated. Within the Organiza- 
tion the possibility was not regarded al- 
together as an evil. The Organiza- 
tion's affairs, it was true, were in emi- 
nently sound condition. Bountiful 
crops— of dimensions surprising even to 

259 


A Knight of the Toilers 

the most enthusiastic advocates of the 
methods that had been employed— 
either had been, or were waiting to be, 
harvested. The Organization’s finan- 
ces were abundant. The workers were 
able to face the oncoming winter with 
neither fear nor anxiety, and, alto- 
gether, even if the conclusion of the 
battle were still to be a long way off, 
the forces of labor were in a position 
to maintain their condition of indepen- 
dence and their attitude of aggression. 
They would, therefore, have preferred 
to have prosecuted the contest to a 
finish. 

Nevertheless, should the possibility 
that was threatened come to pass, the 
disadvantages to the miners themselves 
would not be great. The opinion that 
prevailed was representatively voiced 
by the leader. 


260 


Battle 


‘‘ In any case, that which we have al- 
ready done,’’ he said, will stand as 
clear gain.” 

In the other camp, though in truth 
the weeks had been marked by the 
record of great monetary losses, yet the 
Trust of Operators had still abundant 
millions at their backs, and abundant 
impulse to use them, if, anywhere on 
the horizon, the likeliness of success 
were discernible. 

That which first concerned Pattison, 
as the possibility of the Government’s 
forcible acquisition of the properties be- 
gan to loom large, was to calculate the 
size of the advantage that he might gain 
if such transaction were to be made. 
But on this point the penetrating ob- 
servations of Mr. Barnes were dis- 
couraging. 

Save what you can,” the latter had 
261 


A Knight of the Toilers 

concluded. Make terms with the Or- 
ganization, and make them quick.’’ 
And so for a time the matter stood. 

262 


XXI. 


Pattison sat again at the wide desk, 
his eyes resting on long rows of deso- 
lating figures. The memorandums be 
fore him summed the losses of six 
months. Week following week, each 
item stood large to declare the disas- 
trous results of a battle which had 
really been lost long before. Backed by 
vastness of numbers, solidified by capi- 
tal more substantial than his own had 
been, labor’s power had been estab- 
lished. 

Pattison turned to Mr. Hemphill. 

We must accept their terms,” he 
said. 

What are their terms? ” Hemphill 
asked. 

“ Whatever,” Pattison listlessly re- 
plied, they choose to make them.” 

263 


A Knight of the Toilers 

A moment later, however, he spoke 
more eagerly. 

‘‘Well see— what terms we can 
make.’^ 

In an arrangement of technical issues, 
it had just occurred to him, he still 
might manage an advantage. 

An hour later Mr. Pattison was 
driven over to that humbler part of the 
city in which the miners’ headquarters 
were located. 

“ IVe come,” he said, as he entered 
the spacious office in which Trevor sat, 
“I’m ready to arbitrate.” 

“We can’t arbitrate,” said Trevor, 
abruptly*. 

“ You mean? ” 

It was a subdued Pattison who now 
spoke— too humble, indeed, to resent the 
scant courtesy with which he had been 
received. 


264 


Battle 


You mean that there is no way in 
which we may settle the differences be- 
tween us? ’’ 

That is another question,” said 
Trevor. ‘‘ That, perhaps. What do 
you propose? ” 

Well,” said Pattison, we need 
your men. 

The point of difference between 
us,” he went on, was that we were to 
employ your men— union men— only. 
To that we agree. We agree to employ 
the men you wish to have us employ.” 
‘‘And what else? ” 

“ What else? That was the issue on 
which we fought,” said Pattison. “We 
concede that we are beaten. We agree 
to abide by your wish. We ask that 
the men return to work.” 

Trevor took from a pigeon-hole a 
neatly folded document. There was a 

265 


A Knight of the Toilers 


twinkle in his eye as he turned to Patti- 
son, though his voice abated none of its 
sharpness. 

We have become business-like over 
here/’ he said. He handed over to Mr. 
Pattison the document which he had 
taken down. 

The document was simple. It speci- 
fied four items in which the Trust of 
Operators should stand in debit to the 
Organization of Miners for the year 
that was to follow : 


Item No. 1 (Detailed herewith) $2,500,000 
Item “ 2 “ 3,000,000 

Item “ 3 “ 6,500,000 

Item “ 4 “ 5,000,000 


Total 


$17,000,000 


Attached to the general statement 
were elaborate figures representing the 
grounds on which the claims were made. 
When you agree to that,” said 
266 


Battle 


Trevor, the men will return to work.’^ 
The establishment of their organiza- 
tion had led to a manner of viewing the 
economic facts which affected them with 
something of the broad grasp which had 
been characteristic of the class which 
always had controlled the industries. 
The thought, for example, of an excess 
charge on supplies stood no longer in 
the minds of the miners as an item of 
sixty cents, or as the yearly loss to the 
individual of twenty-five or thirty dol- 
lars. It stood in their nainds as the item 
of three million dollars a year which 
was due to their organization— even as 
it had stood in the employer’s mind as 
the $3,000,000 which he must grind from 
his employees. 

And when the amounts of the several 
claims which the miner righteously 
held, were aggregated, the amazing total 
267 


A Knight of the Toilers 

vividly deepened his consciousness of 
what the impositions upon him had im- 
plied. The millions which had gone an- 
nually to swell the enormous holdings of 
the great trust, and to place in their 
hands the almost unlimited power 
which they exercised, were now beheld 
in something of their true significance. 
They now also were in some measure to 
be reclaimed. 

Pattison’s study of the document 
which Trevor had put before him 
stirred again the passions which in him 
were eternal. The humility which he 
had assumed, was submerged. The 
spirit of hot anger was reawakened. 

That,’’ he said, is a damned out- 
rage.” 

The claim,” Trevor quickly re- 
joined, is not open to debate.” 

But—” the other began. 

268 


Battle 


Nor to discussion,’^ Trevor inter- 
rupted. You understand it. You 
know the justice of it.” 

‘‘ Think of our losses,” said Pattison. 

You’ve got to pay.” 

Mr. Pattison again pondered the 
figures. There was a retributive note, 
of which he was distinctively aware, in 
the very incisiveness with which the 
exaction was made. 

He hesitated. 

To yield the amount was, to be sure, 
to see the Organization step still more 
firmly to its place of power. On the 
other hand, where was choice left to 
him? 

‘‘We agree to the terms,” he said. 

“ But,” he cried out, a moment later, 
“ where is this to stop ? What limit is 
there to be to these outrages? What 
is to determine what our rights are? ” 

269 


A Knight of the Toilers 

Service rendered,’’ said Trevor. 

‘‘ Yon will rob- ns— you will strip ns 
to onr last cent.” 

Gradually,” Trevor replied. 

‘‘ Ob, no,” be then added, yon are a 
pretty good manager yet Pattison. 
But— only a manager. We’ll strip you 
down perhaps to tbe point where you’ll 
realize that it is a manager that yon are 
—only a manager. We’ll strip you 
down to tbe point where your compen- 
sation will be reasonably proportioned 
to your job. Your other character as 
arbitary lord of the earth has been un- 
seemly and overworked— and very dis- 
astrous. And your compensation has 
been too high.” 


270 





DEC 3 tm 


' I '\l I 








